A ‘Spreel’ of a deal

Spreel
Milwaukee-based startup
Innovation: Local daily deal site
www.spreel.com

At first glance, Spreel might look a lot like Groupon, LivingSocial, or any other daily deal website connecting companies and consumers through promotions and discounts.

But Boris Levchets, chief executive officer and founder of the Milwaukee-based startup company, insists it’s more like the “anti-Groupon.”

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Levchets and his eight-member startup team designed Spreel as a “community-focused promotional marketplace” that helps businesses grow a local, loyal customer base and consequently increase revenues.

Spreel allows businesses to add multiple business locations to their online profiles and flag locations where deals can be redeemed.

On the customer side, the web-based tool introduces individual customers to small businesses down the street or across town.

“It’s both an e-commerce marketplace and a tool for businesses to interact, promote and encourage repeat business from their customers and entice new customers to join to be loyal customers of individual small businesses,” said Levchets, who coined the name “Spreel” by combining “shopping spree” and “deal.”

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The startup launched beta testing for the tool in mid-June.

Once Spreel goes live, likely in the fourth quarter of this year, the tool will consist of a public e-commerce marketplace and personalized deal sites created by participating businesses. Both will be accessible online as well as on mobile apps tailored toward businesses and consumers.

Levchets

Currently, businesses taking part in the site’s beta testing can only display their promotions on their individual sites hosted by Spreel. Through those individual sites, they can connect with customers and also share their deals through emails, across social media platforms and on their own business websites.

The daily deals that businesses offer through Spreel, which often aim to draw customers in a business’ doors, are similar to the promotions they might offer on other deal sites. For instance, a participating restaurant might offer patrons 50 percent off a large pizza or hotels that have a few available rooms on a specific date could offer discounts on bookings.

But the setup of these deals, the way they link customers and businesses, and the benefits subsequently reaped by businesses follow a different form, Levchets said.

Deals offered through Spreel must run at a minimum discount rate of 30 percent between 24 hours and 13 days.

Beyond those stipulations and a few basic user requirements, businesses have complete control over their Spreel deals. They decide how many vouchers they want to sell, how aggressive they will be in their discounts, how often they will offer promotions and how to phrase their deals.

This control capability promotes ongoing business success instead of sharp peaks and valleys in business performance, according to the startup’s website.

Spreel’s focus also places much more emphasis on local communities and businesses. The promotional tool pairs a business’ deal with other neighboring, non-competing businesses so that deals reach target audience members who already shop in specific areas.

“Spreel really wants to differentiate itself from daily deals sites like Groupon and LivingSocial,” Levchets said. “Spreel is not in the (business) of building a huge email database like Groupon. It wants businesses, themselves, to be successful by attracting and building their database of opted-in customers. Spreel will then leverage the community of businesses to discover and promote products and services of businesses that are in local proximity.”

Additionally, the startup’s capabilities give each participating business the freedom to customize its set of customers with customer relationship management tools.

“Spreel allows you to build your own customers instead of having a corporate company that’s really the holding database of the customers,” Levchets said.

Each business can then reward its most loyal customers by forwarding them personalized promotion codes or special campaigns. Once the marketplace is live, businesses and customers will also be able to directly connect through an in-messaging function.

Spreel is free for businesses to join and has no monthly fees, minimums, listing fees or contracts. For each transaction, the startup charges 7.5 percent plus 50 cents. Funds are transferred to business accounts daily.

The startup is able to charge significantly less than other daily deal sites because, unlike other sites, Spreel puts the burden of creating and managing deals on the participating businesses, Levchets said. By having businesses take charge of content creation, Spreel spares them additional costs.

While any business in any location across the country can technically sign up on Spreel, the startup is currently targeting Milwaukee businesses during beta testing. After concentrating solely on the needs and preferences of Milwaukee’s business community, Spreel will likely chase businesses in bigger markets, such as Chicago, Minneapolis and perhaps Philadelphia, Levchets said.

But Spreel operations will remain headquartered in Milwaukee, where Levchets spent most of his childhood and schooling after emigrating from Belarus.

“Milwaukee has a lot of advantages that the rest of the nation does not know yet,” Levchets said. “Regarding entrepreneurs, we’re kind of the underdogs, which is awesome, and I’m excited to show the rest of the nation about this underdog city.”

Spreel encourages businesses in southeastern Wisconsin to become early adopters of the tool. Early adopters will be granted extra benefits, including advertising perks.

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