Reebee

Whether they're moms shopping for household staples or college students living on takeout deals, savvy consumers invariably rely on bargains that can often only be found in flyers.

Tobiasz Dankiewicz and Michal Martyniak, who co-founded the flyer app Reebee, saw a way to make the distribution and organization of these deals much more efficient and inexpensive by allowing users to access local flyers on a mobile device. 75 percent of people who download the app return, providing brands with valuable customer insight.

In a consumer world filled with extreme couponing, Groupons and other lifehacks that save shoppers time and money, buyers have made it abundantly clear that they want deals but don’t want to deal with hassle.

“If you see that you're buying a gallon of milk for $3, and the sucker behind you is buying it for $4, even that $1 you saved is a huge success because it involved very little effort and immediate gain,” Dankiewicz said.

Firsthand Experience

When Dankiewicz and Martyniak, both engineering majors who graduated from the University of Waterloo, were newspaper delivery boys in London, Ontario around the age of 10, flyers were the most fundamental way retailers brought customers into their stores. And it’s still true today.

The two co-founders, whose siblings are now married to each other, didn't know one another then, but now share stories of organizing their paper bundles and flyers in garbage bags and making a mess out of their respective living rooms before their paper route. But they saw the value when their customers would wait by the door for their delivery – they were as dependent on their flyers as they were on their newspapers.

Fast forward to college, and they remember trying to search for and download flyers for gadgets and other items off of sites such as Best Buy.

"But then you'd try to browse and have to type in your zip code, or experience a broken iOS, or it wouldn't work because of Flash compatibility. It was a mess," Dankiewicz said.

These salient memories gave way to creating Reebee, which has experienced a 48 percent viewership growth since launching last October. The app boasts 5,000,000 flyers read and more than half a billion products seen by interested consumers. Reebee has more than 110,000 Canadian users on iOS, Android, and BB10.

A Marketplace Opportunity

Flyers are the single most expensive marketing cost for offline retailers, the team pointed out. But the app, which levels the playing field between major franchises and local mom-and-pop stores, cuts down on delivery costs, provides analytics, speeds up delivery and is more environmentally friendly.

And retailer branded apps don’t compare to Reebee’s tailored user experience offerings. Only 25 percent of branded retailer apps that are downloaded are ever opened, and it's usually only loyal customers who return, Dankiewicz pointed out. Reebee targets potential customers as well as existing. From there, the team sees the opportunity to build up its site as a network in which users can share and recommend lists and deals.

Martyniak pointed out it's a big move for stores to completely pull back on print flyers just yet. But this type of advertising is the most expensive part of marketing, and many retailers will be forced to cut back their printing by 50 percent in the next five years.

Making Money

Reebee sells flyer engagements at 2 cents to 10 cents per view. For the price of engaging 50 consumers on the app, a retailer would only be able to blindly drop four print flyers on a doorstep that cost 20 cents to 30 cents each.

The team’s next steps are to build out its community by allowing users to share shopping lists and create a social consumer network in one place with their favorite brands.

The two co-founders have had retailers come to them after asked that they sign up on Reebee. On a personal level, Dankiewicz tells the story of an investor's mother, who said her 73-year-old friend told her that Reebee was one of the only apps she used on her iPad, which she learned about from word of mouth. He said she is a prime example of how easy and essential it is for any type of shopper.

“What Twitter would be to a 16-year-old, Reebee is to the everyday consumer,” Martyniak said.