During an economic recession, few things are more appealing to a consumer than a good sale. Salescoop, a Web site created by Georgetown alums David Ambrose (COL ’07) and Justin Tsang (SFS ’07), promises to lower prices on luxury consumer products through “group buying,” or purchasing in mass quantities.

Tsang and Ambrose started the company in September 2008, and plan to launch the Web site in a few weeks. The site would introduce a new product daily and initiate the process of group buying: The more people who want the product, the greater its price will drop.

Ambrose and Tsang estimate that the discount could be anywhere from 15 to 50 percent. The co-founders stressed that Salescoop would democratize shopping by letting the consumer vote on which products they would like to be available on the site.

“Ultimately we want this group buying to be dictated by the social web. We want people to be able to propose what they want to see on Salescoop,” Ambrose said.

Salescoop would not focus on one specific group of products but would provide a variety of luxury goods available, according to the co-founders. Salescoop would work with a limited number of brands and vendors and offer products from electronic gadgets to designer handbags and wallets. Ambrose and Tsang said that cosmetics and green products are also options for the future.

“All of the brands that we are working with are aspirational and high-premium, things that wouldn’t normally be at a discount. With a group buying model, we can create an on-demand discount,” Tsang said.

Ambrose and Tsang are working with vendors and potential investors in preparation for the launch of Salescoop. Although the Web site would start out selling just one item a day, Tsang and Ambrose said that they hope it would grow and change in the future.

“We have always had the idea of Salescoop becoming synonymous with group buying here in the States, just as Amazon has become synonymous with e-commerce,” Ambrose said.

The idea for Salescoop has been in the making for quite some time. After graduating from Georgetown, Tsang and Ambrose both moved to New York, where Tsang worked at an investment bank and Ambrose at a public relations firm. However, both said that they knew they wanted to eventually become entrepreneurs,and to make use of the Internet. The former roommates brainstormed creative ideas for a new Web site for several years.

“Dave and I were always really interested in doing something on Internet space. We would trade e-mails every other hour about interesting concepts,” Tsang said.

Tsang and Ambrose’s combined experiences with group buying played a large role in the eventual creation of Salescoop. Ambrose, a car fanatic, bought car parts on group-buy forums in which a large number of people could purchase a specific car part for a discounted price. Tsang had a similar experience while growing up in Beijing. He experienced a phenomenon known as Tuangou, China’s version of group-buying. A mass of people swarm retail stores at a specific time and demand a certain product for a reduced price.

Tsang and Ambrose said that their experience at Georgetown helped them through the process of launching their business. Ambrose said he became passionate about technology and its impact on society during his junior year. Although Ambrose was a German major, he wrote his thesis on how people in various cultures communicate online, specifically using Facebook. Tsang, an International Economics major, noted that he has applied academic theories to the idea of Salescoop. Tsang added that entrepreneurship classes at Georgetown, as well as his strong relationships with professors, prepared him for a business career.

“It is the journey over the four years at Georgetown where you discover something and you become really passionate about it,” Ambrose said. “Georgetown gives you the great overview of the world that you really need.”

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