01.10.2007 | 5 Questions for Alex Muller
Revenue Magazine
January 10, 2007
Alex Muller is CEO of GPShopper, a company looking to join the ranks of mobile search
and mobile shopping via cell phone. They have a pretty unique take. We asked Muller
about their business model.
Q: Briefly, how does GPShopper work?
GPShopper develops online and mobile applications to help consumers find and share
good deals on the Web or on their phone. By using online and local product data feeds
to provide an innovative Web-based and mobile product search experience,
GPShopper can help consumers shop — however, wherever and whenever they want to
— while they're out and about on their cell phone or home sitting in front of their
computer. GPShopper also licenses its technology to other organizations that wish to
benefit from our innovative mobile local product search and mobile shopping list
capabilities.
Last year GPShopper launched Slifter, a Web-based and mobile product search and
shopping list application. Consumers can search for items on Slifter.com and find good
deals or they can also use their mobile phones to search via wireless Web or java
applications. Consumers can even use text messaging to find prices and availability simply by texting a product name,
model number or UPC and their zip code.
Q: What are the kinds of products I'm more likely to find on the service, and is the final goal to have the
widest variety of products?
GPShopper works with the affiliate networks to get a wide breadth of products for online search and other companies to get
local product inventory information. Currently, GPShopper's local products consist of mostly consumer electronics, but the
goal is to give consumers search results for billions of products at hundreds of thousands of locations. GPShopper believes
there could be an excellent marketplace for local inventory data where publishers, like GPShopper, can focus on getting
consumers to stores through Slifter-like applications in return for CPC and possibly CPA deals. Smaller retailers can also
visit GPShopper.com to create a retailer account and have their online and local store's products available to the Slifter
consumer base.
Q: What are the main geographic areas in your 15,000 locations? I assume rural areas can't use your
product, and is there a plan to cover the whole nation and beyond?
Currently the geographic footprint is based on the retailers in our system. If participating retailers have locations in rural
areas, then our consumers can find those products there. Additionally, if Slifter has no local results matching the consumer
searches, Slifter will provide online products from affiliate networks, giving consumers the option to see price and
availability from their favorite e-tailers/retailers websites. Consumers who choose to view online products can automatically
email themselves the item from their phone. The email will include the affiliate-network-encoded product link — driving a
CPA transaction.
Q: Is there a plan to add the last ingredient, which is m-commerce (to buy via mobile device), to your
business plan? If not, why not?
At this moment GPShopper has no plans to introduce m-commerce into our mobile applications as the technology to support
secure m-commerce transactions are in their infancy and have not been completely sanctioned by carriers.
Q: Since your service involves phone carriers, local retailers and brand marketers, who would you consider
your bread and butter?
Many click-and-mortar stores, brick-and-mortar stores and brand marketers who know that the majority of their retail sales
are in the physical stores may be looking to extend the efficiencies earned in the online marketing world, with CPA and CPC
advertising for local sales. Although these retailers, who know the value of cross—channel marketing, are paying our bills,
the real "bread and butter" comes from the consumers.
To drive adoption of a local mobile paid search marketing model, GPShopper needed to develop applications like Slifter that
work really well across nearly all phones and all carriers. I am proud to say that our hard work has paid off. Slifter has
seen phenomenal growth with mobile users and gotten rave reviews in the mobile application world.
To download the original article click here (PDF).
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