In my job I've worked with Gilt Groupe on event promotions, but I also like to shop there. In fact, between Buywithme, Gilt, Gilt Taste, Ruelala, and countless other online sales groups, I get at least 10 emails a day notifying me of the next sale, the next opportunity to buy.
One place I never buy from is Groupon. It seems that when people talk about an online sales "bubble" Groupon always comes up. I thought it was more about the offerings, but there is a lot more going on--as this article on the IPO and significant managament problems highlights. It seems like quite a leap for the company valuation to include full "booking" costs for experiences...completely ignoring the fact that a significant portion of the proceeds go to partners. That this differential accounting led to a 400 million dollar overstatement of revenues seems crazy, and incredibly misleading. Now it seems that the management side is experiencing problems as well, with the COO leaving after only months in the job---headed back to Google of all places.
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