About The Group Buy Experiment

This platform attempts to solve for the following, all at once:

1. Make group buys more accessible and more affordable to more people,
2. Make group buys more profitable for makers,
3. Increase the success rate of group buys,
4. Disincentivize larger companies from ripping off and selling cheaper clones of makers' works, and
5. Discourage resellers and scalpers from driving up initial price.

And it goes like this:

1. A Group Buy Runner (often the maker themselves) posts a Group Buy on this platform and shares it with prospective Buyers.
2. Buyers commit to buy at the price of their choosing until the end of the commitment period. (Buyers' identities are hidden from the Runner.)
3. The Runner selects a Group Buy Price that everyone will pay based on the commitments from all potential Buyers. (The Runner does not know who committed what price.) Runners can choose a price that optimizes for revenue, reach, exclusivity, distribution… or however they’d like.
4. Buyers who committed over the Group Buy price established by the runner are only charged the Group Buy Price. Buyers who under-committed can buy at the Chosen Price (but are under no obligation to do so).
5. Collected funds and order details are transferred to the Runner for fulfillment and delivery according to the schedule provided on the platform.

Wait a minute… how does TGBE do that?

So glad you asked.

Economics tells us about supply and demand curves that (in theory) determine price.

Demand shows us what people are willing to pay. As demand increases (Demand₁ → Demand₂), prices (and quantities) tend to go up. The supply curve shows us how much it costs to make and sell… in aggregate.

But for small-run products, setup costs can be brutal.

(See also: minimum efficient scale.)

Because short-run products don’t typically get to economies of scale, the true demand (and price tolerance) is hard to establish. Low volumes mean high per-unit costs, pricing potential demand out.

For some products (like limited edition sneakers) this works out fine as demand is (shockingly) inelastic. For others (like mass-market sneakers) the demand curve is far less exciting.

Perceived demand greatly affects production choices. Smaller makers/manufacturers (usually) cannot afford to finance large production runs on-spec to get to scale… especially for products that are new to market.

TGBE is designed to help makers discover the demand curve for their products while also allowing buyers to pay a fair market price, aligning the interests and letting economics do its work.

Not in abstract, but for real.

Theory is nice and all, but how does TGBE actually work?

Right. See more here.

Who is this for?

This platform was designed with small-/medium-batch manufacturing in mind, somewhere between an Etsy and Groupon, to empower independent makers and smaller product groups to be competitive with better-resourced competitors while providing buyers with a modicum of protection.

Who are you?

This experiment is brought to you by Michael E. Gruen. Read the origin story.

Want in on the Beta?

E-mail us at holler@thegroupbuyexperiment.com and include a bit about yourself, a project you think would do well on TGBE, and any past products you’ve created, sold, or wanted to sell.

New: You can also try us on our Discord Server.

E-mail is better, though, as TGBE’s founder is an “old”.