A Letter from our Founder & CEO
We built Higgle because we felt that the way we shopped online didn't reflect the way we like to do other things online. We love to engage with other people, create and share content, have control over our experiences, and have influence. While we've been able to do this with photos, images and articles, we haven't been able to do this within the context of commerce (shopping and buying online), at least not in a way that's actually meaningful (ie., what we care about when we're buying: personalized recommendations based on who you are as a person and prices driven by what you want to pay). There was no mechanism for people to bring something very valuable, their connections and influence, to the table as a form of social currency. To date, only after the sale were you asked to share what you bought, or you were bookmarking things with others, without any influence over price, or you had to take whatever terms a merchant set at that moment in time (70% off for something you don't want is still a waste of money, full price just because you missed the sale isn't totally fair). It just didn't make sense.
We built higgle because we want to solve this. We wanted to build a more dynamic shopping experience. We wanted to give people a place to have control over their entire buying experience, from discovery to pricing to purchasing to sharing with others. We also give people the ability to express their value to merchants in a way that takes into account their social value (today, it's more than just whatever money you have in your wallet). We also built something that worked for merchants too, and took into account the pricing challenges they face in trying to build and sustain a reasonable business.
We built a marketplace where you can connect with other shoppers who like similar things, and who also want to buy what you want to buy. The connections on Higgle make more sense because, along with discovering what others are buying, you are also (perhaps without knowing it), increasing your purchasing power. It's simple - in naming your price and creating a 'higgle', you are telling a merchant, this is what you want to pay, and the merchant tells you, how many other shoppers need to join the higgle to give you this price. Higgles are sharable across Facebook, Twitter, or via bitly links, but perhaps more importantly, they're shared with other buyers on Higgle - who you may not even know - who want to buy what you want to buy. Easily, you're creating mini sales with prices backed by an entire network of shoppers. Everything on Higgle you can buy at prices you and others set, so we never send you off-site to run around on price. Since prices are set by you and other shoppers, they are always below retail price. Merchants can sell across all of their volume price points, all of the time, and you can use our network and your influence (in an authentic way), to get better prices on the most amazing stuff out there.
We're just bringing the pieces together in a way that makes more sense.
The technical piece is a bit dry, but in case you're interested. We developed a dynamic pricing back-end that automates everything for you and the merchant, so neither one has to sit around to wait for a rejection email, and no one wastes the others time. You'll know in advance the likelihood of your offer being accepted, based on if others join your Higgle, and if not enough people join, that's fine too - we'll give you a counteroffer that is always lower than the MSRP and is still a really good deal.
While pulling in all these 'supply and demand' and game theory principles (#nerdalert), we also tried to make Higgle as fun, engaging (it's kind of like a game!), and simple as possible - basically, we built a shopping and purchasing experience that reflects how we like to do other things online.
We hope you enjoy Higgle. Let us know what you think at hello[a]higgle.com
PS. We've got a lot of stuff in the hopper and this is just the beginning - we'll keep you posted!
