Prices spin down for the Count

Singapore - Today's economic difficulties have no doubt fueled an increased level of internet fraudsters and schemers vying to make a quick buck but CountSpin, a newly launched auction website where the price drops instead of rises, says it's no gimmick.

"It [the launch timing] is a coincidence," Jay Gupta, co-founder for CountSpin, said.

"We are seeing this as an opportunity for us because of the nature of the site. We give people an opportunity to match their budgets with their purchases and this doesn't mean we're saying you can't afford to spend but it's more about being smarter with the spending," he said.

CountSpin, also co-founded by Suraj Daryanani, is a live auction website where the price of the product falls and buyers wait for the price to reach the lowest level they are comfortable with before bidding. The risk is, if they wait too long, somebody else might win the product.

"Simple little twist but it makes it a little bit more exciting and a little bit more different from the kind of auction that eBay has made famous," Gupta said.

Since its launch on 1 November, CountSpin has achieved a community of 500 members and in this time even sold a watch for as little as $0.10. Despite the massive discounting, Gupta says revenue will come predominantly from product sales.

"We have strong sourcing and get the products at a very good price - and have he ability to let the product go for 80% discounts and not break the bank," he said.

"To prevent the prices from bottoming out all the time, we approached power sellers from eBay and made sure there was enough of them looking at the site to take up the deals as soon as it became interesting for them."

The site will only sell watches for the next two months and relies heavily on word of mouth (WoM) marketing on social media to generate interests. The company has no plans to appoint an advertising agency but will invest in developing a widget which can be parked on the desktop or shared in social networking sites. CountSpin will also aggressively market its brand name via blogs, twitter, search engine marketing and through the referral system within the site.

So far, CountSpin has only approached smaller and lower-end watch brands which according to Gupta, have "appreciated the chance to help raise their brand profile" despite being sold at heavily lowered prices.

In the future, the company says it will start seeking advertising dollars from featured brands once the site's traffic numbers bulk up. CountSpin recently appointed Elan Communications as its PR agency.