Oskari Lehtonen On The Offerium Acquisition
Last week we broke the news that Sanoma had acquired the Finnish based coupon site Offerium. We promised to dig a little deeper into this and see what the motives and actual tricks of trade behind the deal were. Oskari Lehtonen was one of the co-founders of the company and we turned to him with a few questions about the acquisition itself.
Sanoma News Acquires Offerium
It seems that the coupon site sales have started in the Nordics. Some time ago Schibsted purchased 37,5% share of Letsdeal.se and now Sanoma News acquires a Finnish contender Offerium. Sanoma News CEO Pekka Soini stated that coupon sales online, through such services as Offerium, is currently one of the fastest growing online segments. Sanoma News wants a piece of that pie. The disclosure came through Sanoma News' press release.
Groupon's Potential Acquisitions In The Nordics And Baltics?
Groupon has just raised like, a billion dollars in investment money. It's clear some of this money will be used to acquire companies and build market share. In Europe, Groupon has acquired Citydeal, which is the biggest single operator that also has some business in the Nordics at least. However, there are lots of smaller and more active companies in the Nordics and Baltics.
Eat.fi Partners With Offerium To Offer Cheaper Meals
The Finnish restaurant site Eat.fi has partnered with Offerium, a Finnish Groupon-kind flash sales site, to offer diners cheaper meals. People looking for places to go out for dinner/lunch on Eat.fi will be now able to spot those restaurants with offers with a little "deal"-icon next to their name. I haven't bought yet anything on Offerium, but putting the restaurant deals into a need based context fits in perfectly and I'm guessing will result in more people finding Offerium as well.
Offerium Is The Finnish Groupon. But Will It Work?
A US based startup Groupon offers users deep discounts on products and services from local businesses, but you need a minimum number of users to sign-up into a deal before getting the discount. And you have only one day to do this. TechCrunch knows that Groupon is on track to generate $100 million in gross merchandise sales in 2010 of which they take a 30%-50% cut. That sounds like a real business.
Now Offerium has opened its doors in Finland. In short, Offerium is a localization of the Groupon concept. The founder of the company, Oskari Lehtonen, was running MyButler before founding Offerium. MyButler asked users what they are interested in and then negotiated two-for-the-price-of-one deals from the given advertisers for the users.
