Durham based start­up Buy­s­tand is aim­ing to rev­o­lu­tion­ize the e‑commerce mar­ket for active life-style goods by using a clever “name your price” strategy.

Inno­va­tion-hun­gry e‑commerce ana­lysts and e‑commerce man­agers might want to take note of Buystand’s big idea. Cus­tomers vis­it its web­site, browse through the out­door sport­ing goods on dis­play and then make an offer on what­ev­er takes their fan­cy. The rest is down to Buy­s­tand, which hunts down retail­ers will­ing to accept the offers.

A win-win strategy?

The firm’s high­ly cre­ative 23 year old CEO, Joe Davy, a grad­u­ate of the North Car­oli­na School of Sci­ence and Math­e­mat­ics and founder of big data ana­lyt­ics firm EvoApp, promis­es that cus­tomers can get the goods they want at very agree­able prices with­out hav­ing to wait for sales or go scour­ing the net for flash deal sites. The strat­e­gy, he claims, is a win-win for retail­ers and cus­tomers alike.

Retail­ers who make inven­to­ry avail­able on the Buy­s­tand plat­form will def­i­nite­ly ben­e­fit. Davy insists, “You sell more soon­er, you make more mon­ey, it’s bet­ter for your bot­tom line and it clears your inven­to­ry faster.”

A team of indus­try vet­er­ans from from the worlds of big data, retail and finance built the star­tup’s web­site, which is cur­rent­ly on beta. The brands avail­able to shop­pers who vis­it the site include names like Bur­ton, Mer­rell, Puma, Salomon and Vans, plus many oth­ers. Once a cus­tomer has found what they’re look­ing for, they just offer a price, where­upon Buy­s­tand scours its inven­to­ry in search of a retail­er who will accept it. If a match is found, the deal is done. If it isn’t, the offer is rejected.

Solv­ing the make-an-offer backache

So far, retail­ers who’ve attempt­ed a “name your price” approach have hit the buffers fast. To man­age the offer flow, they’ve found that they either have to hire new staff or take an exist­ing employ­ee away from their reg­u­lar job. It’s proven too expen­sive and too time-con­sum­ing, frankly. Enter, Buy­s­tand, with its unique auto­mat­ed solution.

With its back end plat­form, which resem­bles those used in trad­ing finan­cial prod­ucts, retail­ers can set high­ly tai­lored pric­ing rules to their goods. Although shop­pers get to see the sports mer­chan­dise and their prices when they’re brows­ing, they only find out who the retail­er sup­ply­ing their cho­sen prod­uct is once a suc­cess­ful match is made.

This lit­tle ven­ture could go far.