| Website | stormmedia.ca |
| @letsgofordinner | |
| Category | eCommerce |
| Phone | 1 877 699 3463 |
| francis@letsgofor... | |
| Employees | 4 |
| Founded | 3/00 |
| Description | Customised consumer discounts |
| TOTAL | $100k |
| FUNDING TOTAL | $100k |
| Seed, 9/09 Bootup Labs | $100k |
Storm Media Innovations Inc. (Storm) has developed a revenue engine for location-aware applications and services (LAA) e.g. Foursquare, Gowalla, OpenTable, and Yelp that provides customized discounts to consumers at the right time, in the right place.
Storm provides LAAs with a solution through its White Label API to LAAs with two revenue-generating mechanisms: 1) Pull: LAA consumers choose special offers or certificates to particular restaurants or services i. Storm charges the restaurant or service a 20% commission 2) Push: a service, e.g. a restaurant, has a slow period and would like more customers immediately. The restaurant uses the Storm API to release a special offer to a subset of profiled LAA users in real-time i. Storm charges the restaurant or service a premium to the commission
To enjoy these perks, people become members of Storm. People can purchase a $15 a year membership with the first certificate or a “PayAsYouGo†membership. To see how the “Pull†product works, visit LetsGoForDinner.com.
The restaurant market is a solid initial target, as restaurants, consumers and LAAs have a series of needs that each group can satisfy: a) Restaurants a. Need customers on a cost-effective basis b. Do not have the time or skills to undertake social media marketing effectively b) Consumers a. Want to save money but not be embarrassed by use/redemption b. Desire discounts when and where they want them c) LAAs a. Have consumers but are searching for ways to monetize them easily b. Users interact, play or check in primarily at restaurants.
The North American restaurant market is worth $350 billion with one million restaurants, driven by an estimated $14 billion marketing spend. Storm has been able to prove that this is a profitable and growing market through its LetsGoForDinner.com consumer brand. It generates $34.00 in annual revenue per member with an upfront cost of $9.00. In a third of the cases this cost is self-funding from the $15.00 annual membership.
LetsGoForDinner.com is piloting different rollout methods with bloggers and freelancers in order to drive down customer and restaurant acquisition costs. They will be combined with a new iPhone application and immediate digital acquisition solutions to increase revenue. With this model, Storm has a clearly competitive and different value proposition when compared to Restaurant.com, The Entertainment Book and other media (Yellow Pages, newspapers, TV and radio) that restaurants use.
With minimal startup capital, the company has grown its consumer base and still has managed to introduce new products (preload, gift memberships/certificates and iPhone to be launched), acquire new restaurants (now at 30) and customers (4000 signed).
