Milo.com helps you find Black Friday deals

Faith Merino · November 23, 2010 · Short URL: https://vator.tv/n/1414

The local shopping site is providing a list of over 5,000 local Black Friday sales

Every year, on the day after Thanksgiving, my sisters and I wake up bright and early and brave the holiday crowds to snag us some deals.  It’s sick, I know.  But I always get such awesome deals!  This year, Milo.com is making your Black Friday attack plan easier to strategize by aggregating a list of local Black Friday deals.

The site, which tracks the real-time availability and prices of more than three million items across 52,000 stores, has aggregated Black Friday sale prices for over 5,000 products, ranging from toys and electronics to apparel and power-tools.  More deals and specials will be added through Friday the 26th (I’m so excited!!), and beginning Wednesday, the company will also allow shoppers to check up on local deals on the Milo Local Shopping app for Android devices.

Users can plan their deals according to categories (apparel, toys, electronics, etc.) or by specific stores, such as Target, Sears, Wal-Mart, Best Buy, and more.

"Everything we build at Milo.com is designed with the user in-mind—and we knew that shoppers wouldn't  want to wait in long lines or stand in the cold only to find that the products they wanted were sold out," said Jack Abraham, founder and CEO of Milo.com, in the company’s announcement. "With Milo.com, users are saved from the chaos that is Black Friday. Not only can they access thousands of Black Friday deals in one place, but they can also do real-time checks to see if a product is still in-stock at their local stores." 

Which is brilliant.  Too often I have plotted and strategized meticulously—planning out my route and my time-table and even my coffee breaks (it’s best to shop with at least one other person so that someone can do the coffee run while the other person waits in line), only to get to a store and discover they’ve sold out of the gadget I was there to buy.  It’s demoralizing, to say the least.

Many are predicting higher sales rates than retailers saw last year.  According to the National Retail Federation, 138 million people are expected to hit the streets in search of deals this Black Friday, compared to 134 million in 2009.

The company claims to have seen twice as much traffic to its site on Black Friday last year than any other day of the year, and it is anticipating another traffic boom this year. 

Founded in 2008, Milo.com has raised $4.95 million from True Ventures, SV Angel, Kevin Hartz, Youniversity Ventures, Keith Rabois, SoftTech VC, and more.  

Image source: milo.com

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Milo.com is the free Web site that enables shoppers to research online and buy local – providing the best of both worlds. It combines the advantages of an Amazon-like experience with the ability to touch, feel and get products now at a local retailer. It provides all of the product details and user reviews people have come to expect with online shopping, and then searches store shelves to find the best price and availability for the products shoppers want – right when they want them.

 

Milo.com’s direct customers are top, nationally-distributed retailers, including Best Buy, Nordstrom, Target, Walmart, and dozens of others.

 

Milo.com’s features include:

    • In-stock search filters that allow shoppers to view only in-stock products in the search results and, through an experience comparable to travel site kayak.com, know instantly whether the item they want is currently available at a store near them.
    • Price alerts that notify shoppers the moment a chosen product at a local store reaches a price they are willing to pay.
    • Distance filters that enable shoppers to pinpoint the stores closest to an exact address that stock the items they want.
    • Real-time availability and price updates so that shoppers never miss out on a sale or drive to a store that no longer has the item in-stock.
    • Price comparison across local stores that allows shoppers to find the retailer closest to them with the best price for the product they want.

o   Sale tracking to find real-time sale prices for more than 2 million products at national and regional stores throughout the country.

 

The Milo.com shopper values information, time and money, and uses the site to make a well-researched decision not only on what to buy, but where to buy it to optimize value, enable trial and have it in-hand immediately.