The online shopping experience is usually one of comparison: You visit numerous sites to find the best deal. Today, e-commerce negotiation site Greentoe puts a spin on that process with an iOS app that lets you name the price you’re willing to spend on that camera or watch you’ve had your eye on.
With the app, you search or flip through categories to find the item you are interested in purchasing and then click the “Make an Offer” button below the item. You then visit the “My Offers” section to see if a retailer has accepted your price.
Greentoe launched out of Y Combinator this summer and has since raised $1 million in seed from Dave McClure, Anand Swaminathan, Erik Witte, Mikihiro Yasuda and Craig Albrecht.
Neither founders Andrew Kurland or Joe Marrapodi have a background in retail, but the platform seems to be doing well. According to Kurland, Greetoe is consistently undercutting the prices seen on Amazon by 12 percent.
It’s not the “everything” store like Amazon is, though. The platform only lets you haggle for home theater systems, photo gear, household appliances such as refrigerators and dishwashers, musical instruments and baby products for now. The founders plan to sell many more products in more categories in the future.
