In January 2013, TeamBuy.ca and Dealfind.com, two of Canada’s leading eCommerce companies, announced what was billed as a transformational merger that would create Canada’s largest online deals destination. The proposed partnership would become the biggest ‘daily deal’ merger in North American history.
“From a consolidation perspective, this merger gives us a rock solid foundation where one in every 10 Canadians is signed up to our service,” Ghassan Halazon, CEO of TeamBuy, said at the time. “Over the past few years, both TeamBuy and Dealfind have chosen to re-imagine the original daily deal model in very similar ways. This makes the merger a perfect fit from an operational standpoint.”
But has this perfect fit worked out perfectly so far?
This past week, Daily Deal Media took a fascinating in-depth look at what’s gone right and wrong for Dealfind since May 2011 when the company completed a successful initial funding round of $31 million.
By the start of 2012, Dealfind was already having serious operational issues. That was apparent from the staggering number of customer complaints that began to draw scrutiny and negative press in the summer. By the close of 2012, Dealfind had shut down its entire customer service outfit, which only served to ramp up the rate of complaints spanning everything from product quality to poor (more like non-existent) customer service.
“So Dealfind was on the block, they couldn’t find a suitable offer, at one point looking to recoup money for investors,” writes Boyan Josic, founder and editor of Daily Deal Media. “When all that failed, they completed a deal with TeamBuy, taking a lot of stock in the combined company hoping that something could be salvaged from their investment. Sources tell us that Dealfind has lost $16M over the past year, while TeamBuy who has raised $15M from investors has not been profitable since inception.”
“I asked Halazon about the growing number of complaints online about Dealfind and his response was that they were working on integrating their internal customer service to support Dealfind and feels that all outstanding complaints will be resolved,” Josic reveals. “As a brand, Halazon explained that, for now,
Dealfind would co-exist with TeamBuy. While there is no timetable for the complete transition Ghassan explained that the ultimate goal is to combine everything under the TeamBuy brand.”
Halazon reportedly anticipates the combined company to be profitable in the next 60 days. The goal, he says, is to become largest Canadian Daily Deal site around – even larger than WagJag, which generates an estimated $4 million per month.
According to Friday report, DDM estimates the combined gross revenue for Dealfind/Teambuy is currently averaging around $6 million per month.
So has Dealfind finally found its way in eCommerce? Decide for yourself by checking out DDM’s comprehensive look at Dealfind’s past, present, and future.
