Lootist: Specialist-Guided Product Discovery

I was reading a post on EJ (Entrepreneur-Journey) the other day about a new start-up, Lootist.com. Lootist is gift shopping site with a twist. You have your Amazon’s and Epinions which, sure, offer you a huge range of goods at your finger tips but how does one find what they want when they don’t really know what they want?

Mike Sonders, the founder of Lootist says “In mid-2006, a couple of months after graduating with my MBA, I needed to buy a gift for my then-roommate for his birthday. He was (and is) a DJ, and I wanted to get him something really cool that he’d appreciate and enjoy… but I didn’t know the first thing about DJs or the stuff that they use”. This is how Lootist was born.

How it Works and How it is Different

I shall walk you through the steps of how I became a ‘specialist‘.

Signing-up is no big deal. I won’t bore you with the details of that. Once you’ve signed-up and activated your account (etc) you go to the ‘My Specialities’ tab. Here, you can select a category (e.g. Music), related words to this category (e.g. cd’s, alternative, hip-hop, downloads, etc) and a bit about what makes you a specialist in this particular category. You may be a musician, a record producer, an aficionado - as long as you can provide value, go ahead and make yourself a specialist.

Now you need to drag and drop the ‘Loot It‘ tab into your bookmark toolbar - I suggest Firefox. To add a product to your area of speciality you go to, say, Amazon, bring up the product page and just click the ‘Loot it’ button. This will activate a pop-up where you scribe some basic information in the fields provided and your done.

The competitive advantage of Lootist is its ability to help people that are not in the know to purchase specialist gifts. Ideal for mums and dads buying Christmas presents for picky offspring.

[I highly recommend checking the FAQ’s before you get started. It’s always handy to, when it comes to using a new site. Find the FAQ’s here.]

Conclusion

Well done to Mike on this achievement. It’s embraced the whole Web 2.0 movement (dare I go there) in that it creates an experience and value through user-interaction. With Loot you’re not being spoken down to by mathematical algorithms and Amazon, you’re following suggestions by people experienced in various categories. A create features is that you may be a ‘buyer’ looking for a gift for your music-minded cousin but you could well sign-up as a specialist in your favourite hobby. It goes both ways. Users become contributors!

I wish Mike the best of luck with Lootist. Also, if you find any bugs do send them through to him via email. He’s one easy guy to get in touch with! Thanks Mike!