Recent Stories with tag shopping

In the beginning there was Mercata and the promise of discounts from group buying. And there was also ActBig, Zwirl, and C-Tribe. And the market liketh them not. Mercata was laid low in 2001, although its intellectual property would live on.

Today, a new generation of group and social buying sites have sprung up: Groupon, Living Social. And, since it's the Internet, a second (or third) generation. Seattle is home to Tippr, Wrazz, and DealPop. Chicago has YouSwoop. Buywithme is expanding. Whither Groop Swoop, SwoopOff, SocialBuy? One can only wonder.

The largest have millions of subscribers, across the country; the bulk are just starting out, and working a geographic niche furiously, advertising themselves as the way to connect with your city. The shared, cloying cuteness of Internet naming conventions aside, the clock is also ticking for all these second-generation companies as they try to define themselves for customers.

TechFlash already sat down with Tippr for a differentiation chat: They see themselves as a collaborative, deal-delivering platform, less tied to brand recognition than Groupon. We knocked on DealPop's door to see what they were all about.

[Full disclosure: DealPop is a SunBreak advertiser and you should probably subscribe to their email alert service right now. Upper right-hand corner there. Do it.]

Right away what sets DealPop apart is that their downtown Seattle offices are the home of WhitePages.com. Alex Algard founded WhitePages in 1996 in his Stanford dorm room, stealing a march on Baby Bells and their printed phone books everywhere, and today the company has 200 million personal listings and 15 million businesses, with over 20 million monthly unique users. They're now incorporating Twitter and Facebook results into their people searches. They have a top 10 iPhone app.... (more)

"a murder of one" by Zenobia Joy, via The SunBreak Flickr pool.

Hey ladies: Blackbird's spin-off, women's store Birgitta is set to close, like, now.  So head to Ballard this weekend for a mega-clearance sale.  Some clothes for women will remain at Blackbird, on the main floor.  But the rest of the stuff upstairs has gots to go!

Full press release after the jump.

Blackbird to Close Women's Store

Big clearance sale on remaining merchandise

As a change in business plan, Blackbird is closing Birgitta, its women's store, immediately. A small selection of women's brands will be integrated into the main floor at Blackbird and the new store, The Field House.

Almost one year ago Blackbird decided to diversify and broaden its reach in the Seattle retail market. Blackbird had been selling menswear to women and also had a successful ongoing women's rack in Blackbird. Women's clothing seemed to be the natural next step. After almost a year, it was realized that the other Blackbird businesses were more successful and took far less effort.

Owner Nicole Miller says, "Closing Birgitta is not easy, but we think people will be excited about our new projects to come."

The space where Birgitta was--upstairs in Blackbird--will be converted into a private personal shopping studio, and will potentially be used for shop-in-shop/pop-up-shops.

THE BIG BIRGITTA CLEARANCE SALE

Sunday, December 13th 6pm - 9pm

Monday, December 14th 9am - 9pm

40-80% off

RACKS AND RACKS of LOVELY THINGS

Karen Walker

Helmut Lang

Harputs Own

Harvey Faircloth

Mono

Fifth Avenue Shoe Repair

Blank

Ladyboy

Repetto

Cosmic Wonder

Deadly Ponies

Patrick Stephan

RVCA

Obey

Tslay

Clu

Boy by Band of Outsiders

Dace

Fremont

Woolrich John Rich & Bros.

and lots of Vintage

It's tech day on The SunBreak, I guess. I've been wanting to write about Locavore, the Seattle-grown iPhone app, for some time, and their recent update announcement just gave me a reason to. (Full disclosure: I have been at parties at the same time as Buster Benson.)

Locavore responds to the notion that eating locally grown food is not just better for your green self-esteem, it's better for local farmers, the environment, and food quality. Plenty of people value locally grown food over an organically grown label, although you often aren't called upon to make that choice around Seattle. (Of course, there are trade-offs.)

The $2.99 app identifies your location in the U.S. and then tells you what's in season where you live. (It also tells you what's coming into season, and what's going out.) It also gives you a list of local farmer's markets and farms, with a description of what the market is like, and tells you how to get there. If you're into the whole social media thing, you can also announce your local eating... (more)

It may only be September 21st, and Seattle may be in the midst of a "late September heat wave" with temps tomorrow in the upper 80s, but it's Christmas at the Downtown Macy's as of last Thursday.

THIS I CANNOT ABIDE.