July 29, 2010
By the ZippyCart Shopping Cart Reviews Content Team
Seattle start-up WRAZZ is preparing to launch their social commerce site on August 6, and has been working to create buzz online as they get closer to the site going live. WRAZZ is the creation of Bret Eickhoff and Ian Porter, who wanted to create a site that offers a better mix of social networking and social commerce. The group buying niche has been the most popular area of social commerce over the last year, but those sites typically lack many features beyond providing daily deals. This is where WRAZZ is looking to differentiate themselves from the rest of the sites online trying to make progress in the social commerce space. The site will give users alerts of daily discounts and promotions which will be good for up to three days, which is different from other group buying sites who often only run deals for one day. Additionally there will be geo-location features which allow WRAZZ users to better connect and coordinate social activities with friends via Facebook.
At launch there will be about 15,000 local businesses which will be working with WRAZZ, and the site is planning on expanding into San Francisco, Portland, Scottsdale, and Salt Lake City withing the next six months. Porter and Eickhoff are starting WRAZZ off in Seattle as it is their home turf, and what better place to start a social commerce start-up? When you visit WRAZZ now there is limited information, but you can sign up now to start receiving promotions and deals when they launch. WRAZZ has a larger goal of expanding to 25 markets within 18 months, and this may be possible as TechFlash recently reported the company is looking to raise up to $1 million in funding. For now the best way to keep up on WRAZZ looks to be their Facebook fan page which currently has over 500 people that like them.
Nick was born and raised in California, but has been working the dot com scene in Seattle for many years. He co-founded ZippyCart back in 2009, and now works here full-time. Nick wears many hats at ZippyCart, including producing content for our Ecommerce News blog. Nick loves photography and the outdoors, so when not working on ZippyCart you can find him out and about in Seattle.
