Hot Retail Companies To Watch In Right Now

Hot Retail Companies To Watch In Right Now: Groupon Inc (GRPN)

Groupon, Inc. (Groupon) is a local e-commerce marketplace that connects merchants to consumers by offering goods and services at a discount. Each day the Company e-mails its subscribers discounted offers for goods and services that are targeted by location and personal preferences. Consumers also access its deals directly through its Websites and mobile applications. The Company operates in two segments: North America, which represents the United States and Canada; and International, which represents the rest of its global operations. Customers purchase Groupons from the Company and redeem them with its merchants. As of September 30, 2011, the Company featured deals from over 190,000 merchants worldwide across over 190 categories of goods and services. Groupon primarily addresses the worldwide local commerce markets in the leisure, recreation, foodservice and retail sectors. In February 2012, the Company announced the launch of Groupon Thailand. In September 2012, it acqui red Savored.

In May 2010, the Company acquired CityDeal Europe GmbH (CityDeal). In August 2010, the Company acquired Qpod.inc (Qpod). In November 2010, the Company acquired Ludic Labs, Inc., a company that designs and develops local marketing services. During the year ended December 31, 2010, the Company acquired Mobly, Inc. In February 2011, the Company launched Deal Channels, which aggregates daily deals from the same category.

The Company distributes a featured daily deal by e-mail on behalf of local merchants to subscribers. It offers daily deals from more than 40 national merchants, including Bath & Body Works, The Body Shop, Hyatt Regency, InterContinental Hotels, Lions Gate, Redbox, Shutterfly and Zipcar across subsets of the North American market. Daily deals that do not appear as a featured daily deal appear as Deals Nearby. Each Deal Nearby is summarized in fewer than 20 words next to the featured daily deal. Deals Nearby of! ten extends bey ond the subscriber's closest market or buying preferences.

National merchants also have used the Companys marketplace as an alternative to traditional marketing and brand advertising. On August 19, 2010, the Company e-mailed and posted a Groupon daily deal offering $50 of apparel at Gap for $25 to 9.2 million subscribers across 85 markets in North America. It sold approximately 433,000 Groupons in 24 hours. Of the consumers who purchased Groupons, approximately 200,000 were new subscribers. As of September 30, 2011, it had 142.9 million subscribers to its daily e-mails.

Groupon NOW is a deal initiated by a merchant on demand and offered instantly to subscribers through mobile devices and its Website. Subsequent to the year ended December 31, 2010, the Company launched Groupon NOW in 25 North American markets. Deal Channels aggregate daily deals from the same category and are accessible through its Website and through e-mail alerts that subscribers sign up to receive. It offers Deal Channels in home and g arden and event tickets and travel. Merchants can register their deals to be included in a Deal Channel. Subscribers can use Deal Channels to focus on deals that are of interest to them.

Self-Service Deals allows the Companys merchants to use a self-service platform to create and launch deals at their discretion. The use of the platform is free and allows merchants to establish a permanent e-commerce presence on Groupon that can be visited and followed by subscribers. The Company receives a portion of the purchase price from deals sold through Self-Service Deals based on the extent to which it marketed the deal. In December 2010, it launched Self-Service Deals in selected North American markets.

Groupon Goods enables consumers to purchase vouchers for products directly from its Website. The Company e-mails deals for Groupon Goods weekly to a targeted subscriber base. The Company offers deals for a variety of product categories, i! ncluding ! electro nics, home and garden and toys. In September 2011, the Compa! ny launch! ed Groupon Goods in select North American and International markets.

Groupon Rewards enables consumers to unlock special Groupon deals from local merchants through repeat visits. Consumers earn reward points at participating merchants by paying with the credit or debit card they have registered with the Company. Merchants set the amount the consumer must spend to unlock a reward deal, and once a consumer is eligible to unlock a deal, it automatically notifies them. The Company distributes its deals directly through several platforms: a daily e-mail, its Websites, its mobile applications and social networks.

In December 2010, the Company partnered with Redbox to offer a daily deal to their user base and it acquired over 200,000 new customers through that offer and in March 2011, it partnered with eBay to offer a daily deal to their user base and it acquired over 290,000 new customers through that offer. The featured daily deal e-mail contains one hea dline deal with a full-description of the deal and often contains links to More Great Deals Nearby, all of which are available within a subscriber's market.

Visitors are prompted to register as a subscriber when they first visit its Website and thereafter use the Website as a portal for featured daily deals, Deals Nearby, national deals, and where available, Deal Channels and Self-Service Deals. Consumers also access the Companys deals through its mobile applications, which are available on the iPhone, Android, Blackberry and Windows mobile operating systems. It launched its first mobile application in March 2010. The Company publishes its daily deals through various social networks and its notifications are adapted to the particular format of each of these social networking platforms.

Groupon competes with Google, Microsoft, Eversave, BuyWithMe and LivingSocial.

Advisors' Opinion:

• [By Steven Russolil! lo] !

  Groupon Inc.'s(GRPN) transformation into a company that isn’t solely dependent upon emailed daily-deal offers is taking a lot longer than Wall Street anticipated.

• [By WWW.DAILYFINANCE.COM]

  GWImages/Shutterstock LOS ANGELES -- Americans typically spend nearly $5 billion on gifts for graduates, with a little over half giving cash and a third offering gift cards, according to last year's National Retail Federation survey. Those surveyed spent an average of $49, which won't buy a laptop, a retirement fund or many of the other gifts often touted as "financially savvy." If you actually want to do some future good with your gift, here are some money-smart suggestions for grads from personal finance experts, college consultants and recent graduates: Living Life Experiences give us more happiness than stuff, according to various researchers. You can put those findings to practical use in a variety of ways. "I'm a sucker for experiences over products, so I might give a gift certificate or Groupon (GRPN) to a nice restaurant or a Paint Nite with a few friends," said personal finance columnist Kathy Kristof, Los Angeles-based author of "Taming the Tuition Tiger" and mother of a recent college graduate. (For her own daughter, Kristof bought the airline tickets for four months spent "kicking around the world.") College consultant Shirley Bloomquist of Great Falls, Virginia, sometimes buys gift certificates for lunch, dinner or a theater outing for the graduate and a friend. Cooking Essentials Learning to fix meals from scratch at home will save your graduate a fortune. A good basic cookbook, such as Mark Bittman's "How to Cook Everything," is one option. Kitchen starter sets are another. Ikea has 7-piece cookware sets for $25 to $50, while Caphalon and Oxo have kitchen gadget sets for $40 to $50. College consultant Bloomquist recently gave a gift certificate for a cooking class to a law school graduate that she could share wit! h some bu! ddies. Help Being Grown Up Transitioning to the work world often isn't easy. Grads may benefit from the services of a resume doctor, a career counselor, a wardrobe stylist, a fee-only financial planner -- or other p

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