News Hit

The winners of last year's Student Entrepreneurs IdeaPitch competition have started their own business, launching a website which offers Melburnians discounts of up to 80%.

Their website, Crowdmass, aims to provide Melburnians with bargains on selected goods and services while guaranteeing local businesses a novel way of attracting new costumers.

The business is the brainchild of three 21-year-olds: Monash IT Graduate, David Wei; Swinburne IT Graduate, Tim Wu; and University of Melbourne Commerce and Law student, Ying Wang.   

“We always wanted to start a business. We’re all pretty conscious with our bargaining and getting good deals ourselves, so we had a look around on the Internet to see what ideas there were. And we thought, how about using the power of bulk buying to get discounts,” Crowdmass co-founder David Wei told News Hit last week.

Crowdmass brings this form of bulk buying to Melburnians. The way it works is simple - local businesses offer discounted goods and services through the site and if enough people buy into a deal, then a potentially large pool of buyers will benefit.

It is a bit like buying in bulk, only a large number of people are able to help offset the costs. For example, rather than being charged $20 to go rock climbing, if enough people buy into a deal on Crowdmass then someone can get in for, say, $10.

David says that if the desired number of buyers is not reached, those who signed up for the ill-fated deal will not be charged. Nor is there a cut off point once the target has been met, meaning that users are guaranteed discounts. All transactions through the site are handled via Pay Pal.

It is an idea that has proved successful in America and the guys are hoping that the concept will also appeal to Melburnians.

Monash IT Graduate David Wei, one of the three founders of Crowdmass. 

Crowdmass launched with its first deal last Tuesday, offering visitors to the site the chance to buy one round of bowling at Rockstar Bowling in Melbourne Central for only six dollars, a ten dollar reduction on the usual price.

Within a couple of hours of the launch, critical (crowd)mass had been reached and thirty people had bought into the deal. That number continues to rise, much to the delight of Rockstar Bowling’s Marketing Manager. At the time of writing, over 200 people had bought into the deal.

Each week a new deal will be offered on the site, putting the spotlight on one local business. David is tight-lipped about what sort of deals will be coming soon, but says they are hoping to get some popular restaurants onboard.

Once the site builds up some more momentum, they are hoping to feature more than one deal per week.

As well as benefiting consumers, Crowdmass enables businesses to advertise themselves

“If you put an ad in a newspaper you don’t know how many customers you will get out of it, and it costs you up front. At the end of the week, we are guaranteeing them a certain number of customers. We are an advertising channel that doesn’t cost them any money and that actually guarantees them customers,” David says.

The website is currently maintained by the three co-founders. Tim, whom David calls a “technical genius”, handles the web design while David and Ying organize new deals.

As they are currently a small team, they have taken advantage of social media to increase awareness of their business and get the word out to the maximum number of people.

“Because we are a small start up, because it’s a web business and because we’re students we don’t have much capital. So we want to utilize social media. Social media is a free thing and it is a wonderful thing,” David says.

The guys have established a sizeable Facebook presence, have cultivated a large number of email subscribers and maintain a blog to keep those interested up to date on the latest developments at their company. They have also adopted Twitter recently.

With more and more transactions being handled online, David says that it is essential for businesses to carve out a social media presence: “With social media, consumers advertise to consumers, making a viral network. I recently saw an ad for a butcher using social media. You can order your meat online and they deliver it to your door and that’s… awesome.”

So, what’s next for Crowdmass? As well as offering cheaper goods and services, the site’s About Us section says that its aim is to “gather a large ‘Crowdmass’ of people to achieve positive social change.”

Says David: “We’re not trying to restrict Crowdmass to a site where you just buy deals. We’re using the power of social media, the power of each individual’s contribution to a large collective goal - like fundraising for charity. All these things are lined up. The deal concept is what we’re working on at the moment, but in the future, once we build up a fan base then I think we can achieve a lot of things - not just getting good deals.”

As for any young entrepreneurs who are wondering how they could start their own business, David has some advice:

“If you have an idea, go with it. Don’t think ‘I haven’t got time’. If you’re passionate about something, go for it. Everyone has ideas everyday. It could be the smallest thing – like ordering meat online.”

Crowdmass offers new deals every Monday.