Launching on a fresh canvas in February 2010, CityDeals weren’t to remain alone very long in the competition as the French daily deals market shot to the top.
With aggressive marketing strategies and advertisement campaigns, the Samwer brothers reached 400 000 unique visitors in two months before rivals such as Vente-Privée, Cdiscount, Lookingo and Bon-Privé moved in. It is no surprise to hear that currently France is under coupon-machine Groupon’s top performing countries in the European. In March 2011 the company announced a five million-membership figure, with revenues of $35 million in the top ten French cities, ranking seventh in e-commerce in France with 8.6 million unique users.
In September 2011 the European daily deals market was worth 13,072,915 euros, with France representing a turnover of 1,876,721 euros. France’s top deal consuming cities are Paris with 18 893 deals a month, followed by Lille and Lyon. Paris remains ahead of the race in front of Madrid, Berlin and London.
Scoop.it recently published an exhaustive list, raking up over 90 daily deals sites and aggregators in France and with 65% of the French population having heard about daily deal websites and 43% signed up to one in August 2011. The French market is one of the most competitive with 60% of those 43% signed up to Groupon and 53% users have purchased. In January 2012 FEVAD, the French e-commerce federation, clocked a raise in Internet sales of $3.7 billion, in other words a progression of 22% in a year.
Home to the big, Groupon, LivingSocial and Kgbdeals, France is not lacking in its own native daily deal sites. Lookingo is France’s biggest site with over 15 million euros saved by 1.5 million members across 35 cities. Launched in 2010, 500 000 of its users are in Paris alone, Lookingo was crowned in May 2011 as number one for quality by Capital Magazine, far in front of its rivals. In July 2011, Bon-Privé went into partnership with French TV channel M6, broadcasting publicity stunts and introducing offers on its website, present in 11 cities Bon-Privé has raised 1.5 million euros and is in the top five of French deal websites.
October 2011 picked up on a decrease in growth for Europe for the third month running and a global 9% decrease. France showed an 11% decrease throughout the three months, however has still stayed on top. So in this new year what will the biggest European daily deals market behold. Newly set-up Global Daily Deal Association will be releasing an industry report shortly.
