Consumers may shrug these days when e-mails for deals and sales clog their inboxes, seeing as the Web is inundated with such offers. New York startup Hukkster believes it can help shoppers pinpoint the products they really want, with a “bookmarklet” service that alerts its users when prices drop on specific items they want to buy.
Co-founders Katie Finnegan and Erica Bell launched Hukkster in private beta in May and plan to unveil an updated, overhauled website in late September. The duo founded Hukkster to address the glut of e-mail generated by product promotions and offers that they felt were rather generic. “We wanted the benefit of those deals,” says Finnegan. “We didn’t have the time to sift through it.”
Hukkster users create bookmarklets when they see items they want on e-tailing sites. It’s akin to Pinterest users pinning items they like, but with a focus on discovering discounts. When a Hukkster user creates a bookmarklet, they record the product’s original price and decide if they want to be alerted any time the price gets cut or if a certain percentage gets shaved off. For example, a user could choose to only receive an alert when a desired item gets discounted 50 percent. Bell says Hukkster is a way for consumers to curate the offers and prices cuts they want, rather than having deals pushed to them by retailers.
Hukkster users only receive e-mail alerts when prices for items they want hit the thresholds they set. The company generates revenue through a relationship with Skimlinks, a London-based affiliate marketing network which Pinterest previously used. Skimlinks lets content publishers take a slice of revenue when users click links on their websites to buy merchandise from e-tailers. In addition to that cut, Hukkster also plans to develop analytics services based on data gathered about pricing and product promotions—information the company believes retailers will buy.
Beyond the September unveiling of the revamped site, Finnegan says the company
