Through a rather funny incident I came across Raffle.it - a really interesting twist to the whole notion of social commerce (especially on the selling side of things).

What Raffle.it basically does is to run raffles (yeah, I know - you kinda guessed it). The way they do this is: Raffle.it offers an item for raffle (say a Playstation 3). You buy one or more raffle tickets for a few pound/euro/dollar each and with each ticket you can choose a number out of a set of predefined numbers. The lowest number which was chosen by only one person wins. Simple.

The whole concept is neat from a buyers perspective - with a little bit of skill and luck you can ‘buy’ really expensive items for a few pound. It’s fun - and as concepts as Telebid, Luupo, rabattschlacht.de and recently xgewinnt.de prove: Users seem to be willing to try their luck if the price (both the price per ‘ticket’ and the item they can win) is attractive enough.

Personally though I find Raffle.it much more interesting from a seller’s perspective: The moment they open up their system for everybody (at the moment the raffles are hand-selected and often come from companies), it will be possible to raffle away pretty much anything. Which could prove to be a pretty smart business model for expensive, rare items. Want to sell your Porsche? Why not set up a raffle where the total amount of sold tickets represent your desired price and your buyers each have a chance to get the car for only a few pounds.

If you now combine this system with some smart marketing in the background - inject some vouchers, product samples and so on for those who didn’t win - and you’ll have a nice, round business model. It will be interesting to see in which direction Raffle.it will develop itself - there are definitely some distinct (and rather different) routes the company can take.

Posted in E-Commerce