What now? Run another campaign to increase cash flow. Higher volume at a lower margin is still worth it, right? Once the money runs low, they still have redemptions coming in the door. They do not have any traditional forms of marketing in place to drive business, so they rely on third parties to drive traffic. Many dropzones became addicted to this cycle. "We only make money when you make money," the sales people say. They began calling every dropzone in every city they served, and the rest is history. Groupon expanded, capitalizing on consumer purchase behavior shifting online. I don't need to tell you what happened after that. Months later, we would begin dying a slow death as we struggled to make ends meet by the end of the redemption period. On the front-end, we were seeing huge cash injections. We sold 2,107 tandem skydives in 3 days! We were intoxicated by the amount of business we were getting. It was exciting and terrifying all at the same time. We were being inundated with calls because of the Groupon campaign. Nearly the entire staff was in the office helping answer phones. I clearly remember the day I walked into our Hinckley location the day the first skydiving Groupon went live. A part of me thought "I must be the only idiot willing to try this." When time ran out, users actually missed the deal.īob was very persistent and I finally caved and told him I’d give it a shot because I knew they would only sell 10 - 20 tandems for us. Why not throw the guy a bone? At least he will stop calling me. And the site only featured one deal per day - not the plethora of options available all the time now. At that time, Groupon wasn't focused on higher-priced experience offerings.
No skydiving operation had ever worked with Groupon and I was intrigued by the idea of being first on a new marketing platform. He pitched an idea to me that seemed absolutely ridiculous. Chicagoland Skydiving Center has always embraced change and pushed to try new things.īack in 2009, I received a phone call from a guy named Bob Matteson at a Chicago-based tech start-up called Groupon. How did we get here? Why can't we break the cycle? Well, I may have started this mess, and I'm truly sorry.
It's a problem, pushing our industry to circle the drain and price ourselves out of business. Groupon is the most popular in this category, and many dropzones rely on it as their core marketing strategy these days.
Many point to the prominence of daily deal websites for this decline. Skydiving operators throughout the country are concerned about the decreasing price trend for tandem skydives.
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