"We have vouchers on our website for 40,000 different locations across the UK,” says serial entrepreneur Liebmann. “We’ve also created a search engine, taking our business-search skills and applying them to vouchers. You can now search for any type of voucher, in any place.”
The most popular type of voucher is the two-for-one meal deal, he adds.
Liebmann is now busy striking partnership deals with various distributors, who’ll use his voucher-search technology on their websites. BView, which is backed by Ariadne Capital, is currently working with a mid-sized search engine and several unnamed newspaper groups, with more than 100 different websites pushing the technology between now and the end of the year.
He sees the promotion of vouchers as a win for local businesses. “We’re creating a new way for businesses, especially small firms, to advertise,” Liebmann argues. “There are businesses out there who are struggling right now to compete against the online channel. They need a way to fight back. By putting a voucher on BView, they’re targeting a whole network of search engines and online publishers."
Liebmann is delighted with the way his business has evolved. “We started out with a pretty good business search engine and we found, particularly with the recession, people loved saving money and businesses were struggling to get their offers out,” he says. “We found a smart way to mediate between local businesses and local customers.”
When the recession ends, Liebmann is confident this new-found love for vouchers will remain: “It’s the type of recession that only comes once in a lifetime but it’s also something that forms long-term behaviours, just the way the Great Depression formed them. My grandparents were very thrifty in certain ways, even if they didn’t need to be, because they lived through the Great Depression.
"A lot of my friends wouldn’t be caught dead admitting using vouchers six months ago. Now they brag about who’s saved the most money. The culture of conspicuous consumption is crass now."
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