Google’s Froogle has been an also-ran among the giant comparative shopping sites, being out-distanced by the likes of eBay’s Shopping.com and Scripps’ Shopzilla. Indeed, Google’s apparent inattention to Froogle has been a mystery.
But this week, Google turned on the burners for Froogle. It announced that it will provide sales-and-inventory search programs for big box and local merchant retailers with Tribune, Knight Ridder and Gannett’s ShopLocal, and StepUp, a Bay Area startup that now provides online inventory search for 1,200 retailers in 8,000 locations. Roughly 75 percent of StepUp’s merchant base, or 900 retailers, come from outside the Bay Area. StepUp also has 250 Bay Area specialty retailers, grandfathered from its acquisition of MarketSquare.
The Froogle announcement is actually the first concrete manifestation of GoogleBase, a do-it-yourself classifieds and Yellow Pages builder. While few details of GoogleBase have been released, its mere existence has caused some consternation with local media and commerce companies, who now finally understand that they’ll be directly competing with Google.
StepUp President and CEO Kendall Fargo told The Local Onliner that Google’s interest in providing sales-and-inventory search is mostly based on getting more clicks for AdSense. Google hasn’t taken a financial interest in his company, he said.
StepUp (and ShopLocal), for their part, win big distribution for their merchant relationships, for which they charge subscription fees. The basic StepUp package includes a store page, product merchandising tools, and product listing. A $49 premium package also includes syndication to shopping site such as Froogle, product reservation, and real time reporting. Inventory is maintained via a simple Quikbooks program, although Fargo says that the system is being “ported up.”
Fargo adds that StepUp has been most effective in categories where products are bought locally, rather than online. High end electronics, furniture, and lawn and garden goods have been especially strong categories.
In addition to Froogle, StepUp also provides syndication to Internet Broadcasting Systems, which provides TV stations with websites. A “major” Yellow Pages relationship will also be announced during 1Q 2006. Among the big Yellow Pages companies, Verizon SuperPages has had the most active retailer program, but Fargo would only confirm that the company was among “the top five.”
Clearly, Fargo believes that it is up to the Yellow Pages to either partner or go away. StepUp’s marketing literature makes it clear. “Forget about spending hundreds, or even thousands of dollars a month for print and Yellow Page ads,” says a statement on the company’s website. “Our service starts at just $39 per month for our Basic service and $49 per month for our premium service. Plus, for a limited time, we’re offering a FREE 60 day trial and FREE setup!”
Our view is that local merchants have been slow to clutter up their routines by adding inventory and online services to their busy schedules. With the exception of certain, key categories, we don’t expect that they’ll change their habits overnight – especially outside of the larger, cyber-savvy markets. But partnerships with the likes of Google certainly make such efforts more worthwhile for them.
The challenge for local merchants online, of course, is to be noticed at the same eye level as the big box stores that tend to dominate. We’re still waiting to see some innovations on this front.
