Walk into a Best Buy today and you'll probably see at least one person looking up a product on their phone to find the best price. They came into the store to lay their eyes on a new gadget but plan to buy it on Amazon. This increasingly common practice, called "showrooming," usually results in a great price break for the customer. But retailers are hurting.
Nathaniel McNamara and Michael Weiksner want to change that. Like many startup founders these days, they think the answer lies in a game. The two view their new shopping app Tip or Skip as a tool to reverse the showrooming phenomenon by nudging shoppers into the store to buy something they first saw on their smartphones.
On the surface, Tip or Skip is a "hot-or-not"�style shopping game. Players submit photos of clothing, gadgets, food, and art that they find on other websites and in their personal iPhone and Instagram libraries. The community judges each photo by giving it a tip ("I like it") or a skip ("I'll pass"). "Tipped" photos earn their creators sway points, which they can use to tip more items as they compete to become tastemakers. As people play, the idea is that popular, high-quality items�and the people who post them�gain more attention while less desirable finds fade into the background.
Unlike Pinterest, which is littered with pictures of products but scarce on information about where to buy them, Tip or Skip does its best to include relevant shopping information such as price and store location with every photo. For pictures taken from other websites, that means using a "Tip it" bookmarking tool that grabs the price and store URL. Tip or Skip players can also snap pictures of products at local stores and include Foursquare data or drop a pin on a map to show where to buy something.
To get people into stores, Tip or Skip is looking to Apple's Passbook feature, which debuts in iOS 6 this fall. For example, if you tipped a shirt at the Gap, Tip or Skip will use Passbook's location-aware notifications to coax you to buy it the next time you pass by a Gap store. The app will also sense deals nearby for items you've tipped, pushing you to support a physical retailer by pinging you when you're literally in the best position to buy.
"Tip or Skip helps identify the desire to buy something while online and plays up the ability to purchase it offline," McNamara says.
For brick-and-mortar retailers, McNamara and Weiksner's attempt to hold back the flood of people turning to Amazon, Fab and eBay to buy clothes and electronics offers a helping hand from the same digital realm that has stymied their sales. Big box stalwarts like Best Buy, which closed 50 stores this year, are losing the fight to online retailers. At the same time, smaller local stores hit by showrooming need something to help bring customers back. An app like Tip or Skip could play on the urge for the instant gratification that comes from an impulse buy. But if an online store really has the best price, the warm, fuzzy feeling that comes with getting a good deal will likely keep customers showrooming, skipping even the stuff they've tipped in order to save a few bucks.
