Just received news of a site that is looking to create an F1 team owned by the fans of formula one : myF1dream.com
Every member of the site will eventually be expected to contribute £35 to join in.  However, fairly and sensibly, this won’t be until the site signs up 70,000 fans, ensuring that they can generate a large chunk of cash before actually asking the members to pay up.

Once you’re signed up, you’ll be asked to join the myF1dream facebook group.  I guess facebook will be used to provide members with voting and discussion services.

Sounds like a great idea.  This concept has been applied in the UK to football, where a cooperative formed on the web is trying to buy an existing football team.  If anyone remembers what that site is, let me know.

myF1dream.com

The StoreMob blog is shifting focus to report on all the other tuangou and team buying sites around the globe.

Help me build up this resource, if you have any team buying news to report, please let me know:  report any tuangou or team buying news here.

Just a note to let you subscribers know that StoreMob is still alive and kicking.

Work on the project has been slow recently - unfortunately I don’t have all the time I’d like to dedicate to StoreMob technically and promotionally speaking to get it saving people money as soon as possible.

I’m working on switching web hosts at the moment, and once that’s done the next goal is to get the London trial email list up and running.  If there are any technical folks or marketing folks out there who can lend a hand along with a healthy dose of enthusiasm, I’d be more than happy to hear from you, please just use the site contact form or leave a comment below. Thanks - Eliot

I’ve quickly realised expecting potential team buyers to check the StoreMob message boards regularly for team buying events is asking too much, and is an unreasonable expectation to have of most users.

This expectation of mine reminded me of one of the quotes on my wall: “Other people are not in this world to live up to your expectations.” - Fritz Perls

Dr. Perls’ slice of wisdom may not be my favourite quote, but it got me thinking hard about how to bring team buying to the public eye: how to make team buying work for people without asking them to create a new habit of checking StoreMob message boards regularly.

The problems of the message board team buying model are now obvious to me after having over a fortnight of visitor statistics showing users excited by the team buying concept visting the site only once, and not actually browsing the message boards for team buying events:

Team buying is primarily for big ticket purchases. You know, cars, freezers, plasma TVs, mobile phones, digital cameras - that sort of thing. Most of us only make a big ticket purchase occasionally. We do not make big ticket purchases frequently enough to make visiting a team buying message board become a habit, so potential team buyers will be likely to forget that StoreMob exists. Next time they are thinking of splashing some cash, they will be unlikely to remember StoreMob can be used to save them money, and so the message boards, for most, will be as good as dead.

So this is a big hurdle to overcome, but I think email communities may be the answer. Here’s how the first draft of the communities could work:

1. You go to StoreMob.com and select your local area (e.g. London).
2. Give your email address.
3. Receive emails about upcoming team buying events at retailers in your area.
4. Join any events by replying to the email.

Retailers and email subscribers would of course be able to initiate their own team buying events by email, not just ones I’ve organised. In fact I’m counting on this - I have a lot of enthusiasm for saving people money, but I don’t have the gumption or more crucially the time to plan team buying events for the whole of the English speaking world.

Shortly I’ll start trialling this email method for the London area. If you want to sign up for the trial, leave a comment on the form below or let me know via the contact form.

Who wants a team buying event near home?

If you put your hand up, I can’t see it, so instead of doing that, put your hand on the keyboard and write in the comments form at the end of this post where you’d like a team buying event to be organised. Specify the location and the shop (and the date if you are able).

This doesn’t mean an event will be organised where you are, but it does mean registering your interest will increase the likelihood of getting an event near home sooner.

UPDATE: The competition has now finished. StoreMob contestant Alastair Ferguson was first to be picked out of the virtual hat and answer the question “What is a team buying event?” with the correct answer “When a group of shoppers go into a shop or car showroom and negotiate together to get a large discount on their individual purchases”. Congratulations Alastair! I hope you get something nice with your voucher!

Just answer the simple question below and fill in your details to enter the competition. There will be one winner chosen at random after the competition finishes.

Competition entrants can choose to subscribe to the StoreMob newsletter. The newsletter is short and to the point, yet packed full of all the news you could want on team buying and StoreMob (and you can unsubscribe any time).

Competition Rules:
1. The competition will close at 9pm Thursday 5th April 2007
2. Entry to the competition is restricted to one entry per person please.
3. Multiple entries will be disqualified.
4. Excessive multiple entries from the same email account pertaining to be representative of friends and family will also be disqualified at the judges discretion.
5. No automated entries or third party are permitted!
6. Competition is open to UK residents
7. Prizes can only be sent to a valid email address
8. Winner will be chosen at random, by computer, from all correct and valid entries to the competition
9. Winner will be contacted via email and will have their name displayed on website.
10. StoreMob.com is compliant with the data protection act. Our policy is such that we will not pass on your details to any third party without your prior consent.
11. The Judges decision is final and no correspondance will be entered in to.

UPDATE: This problem is now fixed! Please ignore the rest of the post - thanks!

I’m sorry to report that the message board is experiencing a minor technical issue where the links on the board home page aren’t right. They should be fixed in the next few hours.

You can still register and post threads, but you will have to use these links to access the forums:
General chat http://storemob.com/board/general-chat/
Store mob events http://storemob.com/board/store-mob-events/

For StoreMob to save people money at team buying events it will need its user numbers to reach the tipping point.

Ideally the number of StoreMob users will end up being enough so that team buying organisers (anyone can be an organiser btw, you just need to take a minute to register on the message board) can post team buying events for their local area and know that they will receive a good response from nearby StoreMob users.

So the problem I’m asking for your help to solve is how can a team buying community be built quickly? How would you promote StoreMob? How would you publicise the idea of team buying? Send ideas using the comments form below please (all comments will be read and responded to!).

The ideas can be as sensible or crazy as you like - from advertising in Yellow Pages to advertising in space - let me have it! Thanks in advance - Eliot.

(Finally, a quick personal note…you are seeing this web site and its community in its infancy; today is StoreMob’s 0th birthday (we are zero!), but readers of this blog can take simple actions now that will help form the StoreMob community into something that’ll save a lot of people a lot of money. To start helping, all you have to do, assuming you feel like being nice to StoreMob on its birthday, is tell a friend or colleague about team buying and point them in the direction of StoreMob.com).

If there are a number of days you are happy to organise a store mob event for, feel free to add a post to the board for every day to increase the chances of getting a good response. If you get people joining the store mob on different days, don’t worry, I’ll contact them to see if they can make your preferred day instead.

In these early days, I’m worried team buying organisers will quickly become unhappy if their events are getting low numbers of responses.

If this ends up being you, then thank you so much for joining in and please don’t give up on us. If you absolutely feel you don’t want to spend any more time posting events and browsing the boards, then please contact me telling me so and I’ll email you when (fingers crossed) StoreMob has reached its tipping point (there is a post later today about the tipping point).