The website with Black Friday deals every day of the week. What's going on. I'm Rich Damiro. This is Rich on Tech. Joining me on the show today is Josh Myers. He is CEO of the website slick Deals. This is one of my favorite websites to check on a daily basis because basically they scour the web, or people that are using the website scour the web.
They find the best deals, other folks vote them up.
And you know, I'm just gonna have you describe what your website does because I think you're gonna do a better job. But basically you unearth all kinds of great deals around the web.
Yeah, well, thanks Rich. The slick Deals has been around for nineteen years now. We're just celebrated our nineteenth birthday, so that's wow. That's really long in Internet terms.
So that people love saving money.
People love saving money.
The site was started in nineteen ninety nine by our founder in his college dorm room, and it just started out as a blog of him posting what he thought were the best deals, and I added the forum functionality for users to be able to make contributions and sort of in a few years, the users were contributing far more than he was, and it became more of this crowdsource shopping platform that we see today. So really the cool thing about Slick Deals is we we leverage the
wisdom of the crowd. You know, it's crowdsourcing at its finest. And there's millions of consumers on Slick Deals. They're finding deals on everything from you know, tools to TVs to hiking shoes to tie detergent, and we've done all the work for you where you can see something's got one hundred thumbs up and it's got one hundred and twenty
comments from our users. You start getting in there and you start reading those comments and you realize, oh wow, this is the lowest price that we've seen, you know, all year, and you know, to kind of jump on that, on that deal.
And so give me the idea of this this sort of front page of deals, because that's the page that I have bookmarked. It's kind of like deals from across all the different categories right.
Right, So our front page is where we put the very best deals every single day. So every day we put about forty it tends to be about forty to fifty deals a day that will put up to our
front page. And it's really based on all that community voting, but we have an editorial layer as well, So our editors sit on top of this community and they look at all the voting and commenting activity, and when they see deals that are starting to reach that threshold of getting quite a bit of voting and commenting, obviously in a positive direction, then they'll go in and they'll take
a look. They'll go verify that that deal is legitimate, they'll test the deal, and then they'll write it up and describe it and add some photos and really curate it. Then they get it ready and they move it over to our front page. And that's where you and I can just go to that front page and now you know what Slick Deals has said are the best deals of that day.
So let's talk about Black Friday, because this is a huge shopping day. Everyone is basically has their kind of shopping list ready for Black Friday slash Cyber Monday.
What are you see in this year? What's kind of the trend you're seeing?
Yeah, so we looked at the National Retailer Foundation the NRF, and they did a study and a survey. They do it every year and this year, they're projecting just over one thousand dollars per per consumer for holiday spending. That's up four point one percent from the prior year. So that's that's pretty strong growth. And of course we all know things are moving more and more online, but it actually moved ten points, so it was a ten point
move towards online. So it's massively moving online at a pretty heavy pace.
So you're saying that Black Friday, which I used to buy the way wait in those lines a couple of times over the Black Friday holidays. Yeah, for like, you know, the best buy deals. I got a I think a PlayStation once. I don't even know if it was, like maybe it was PlayStation two. So do we have to wait in those lines anymore? Or do you think that we can just go online and be just as confident as the stuff that we're seeing is like the doorbusters?
Right?
They have the doorbusters I think mostly in both places now, but and there still is this offline element, and there still are offline brick and mortar, you know, deals that might draw some crowds. It's our point of view though, that the best prices are also available online and increasingly that I think that is the direction you're gonna see it go.
But there's always going to be these.
Teasers to try to to try to get you in store. You know, we talked a little bit about the free shipping aggressiveness that's going on, and then you know, Walmart isn't necessarily offering any special free shipping, but they're doing coffee and cookies in store on not.
Really, so coffee and cookies in store is going to get me to go to the store versus sitting in my house with you know, in my pajamas and shopping.
I mean, it's interesting though.
It brings back kind of an air of community to kind of a brick and mortar.
Tell me about the shipping.
You mentioned free shipping, so we know Amazon this year, which you know, I was kind of a little upset because here I am a prime member for since day one, and now they're offering shipping for free to everyone. But it's not the same shipping that I'm getting as a prime member, you said.
Right, So we looked at some research that said ninety four percent of consumers are planning to take advantage of free shipping this holiday season, and we just know all the time free shipping is always the best. Yeah, it's always the best, and it's such a powerful message. And you know, even actually if the net price including shipping is lower, but you have to pay for shipping, but you're ultimately getting a better deal, it's still hard for
people to pay for shipping. Psychological, psychological.
And I've noticed that some of the things on Amazon, being a Prime member, I only pretty much only shop there. I've noticed that prices are a little bit higher sometimes, yeah, but they include that that shipping cost has to go in somewhere right, right, And so I've noticed that, Like, but if you're an Amazon shopper, you don't necessarily shop around, right.
So Amazon's offering, as you mentioned, they're offering free shipping to everyone. They're cap on that consumer psychology of free shipping being so important. But they're only giving the slow ship option to the non Prime members. So don't necessarily expect that if you're a non Prime member that the free shipping you're going to get is going to be the two day Prime shipping.
And then Prime members are getting even faster. I heard they're they're giving us like same day on certain items.
On certain items, you can get same day depending on what part of the country you live in, and and you know, I think there are a lot of algorithms you know that go into that. And then Target as well is offering you know, they're going really aggressive on free shipping, and they're offering their two day shipping free to everyone during this you know, holiday shopping period. So
you know, they're going really aggressive. And it's interesting that Walmart at least not yet has Walmart has not announced they're going to go down that that hardcore free shipping path.
So what's the deal with Walmart? You spend what twenty five thirty five forty five.
Walmart is thirty five dollars to get the two day shifting.
Okay, so let's talk about some of these deals. So we saw the Google Home Hub normally one hundred and fifty bucks. This is one of my favorite gadgets of this season. I think they're going to sell a lot of these things. You've got it down to like eighty five dollars, but it's at Coal's Rights, a place I wouldn't normally think would sell the Google home Hub.
Right, So, the Google Home Hub is normally one forty nine. They have it marked down to ninety nine, and then they give you fifteen dollars of coal's cash back, so the coals cash can only be redeemed in coals and you need to find you know, obviously find something to do with that coal's cash. But gets you down to
eighty five dollars on that Google Home Hub. And and you know, for anyone who's had the Google Home Mini, let's say, a precursor device, or even if you're part of the Alexa ecosystem, you know how convenient it is to have this powerful, you know device maybe in multiple
rooms in your home. But the fact that the Google Home Hub has a screen, then maybe that's the one that goes in kind of the kitchen or kind of that main area where you find yourself, you know, using it all the time, and then you can put.
You know, minis in some of the other rooms.
But you know, I don't know if you've done some of the integrations, like uh oh yeah.
I in fact, I just I just noticed because the hub, which is really cool, it lets you see visually all.
The devices connected in your home.
And I've got cameras, I've got lights, so I just discovered that you can swipe down and see all your lights that you have connected so I was able to change all the lights in my home at the same time to blue or whatever color you want.
It gives you actually, like.
A little dots of color so you can just select, which was really cool because normally, like I have a mix of Lifix lights and what is it hue lights. I have some ge bulbs I was testing. They all have different apps that use to control them. But Google Home Hub somehow integrates that all into the hub, which is really cool. So what's your advice for people using Slick Deals to plan for Black Friday and also shop on Black Friday? Do you get ideas from the website?
Do you kind of single out things that you want and research on the website? Do you do combination of both?
Well, So, I think what slick Deals does at its best, if we're doing our job here for a Black Friday, we're taking and doing all the work for you. So if you just look at the Coals Black Friday ad alone, it's fifty plus pages. Let's say there's ten items per page. We're talking about five hundred plus items that are for sale, and they're all on sale. They're all at least okay deals, but they're not all can't miss deals right, and so
then you take that and you multiply that times. Every single retailer is Black Friday ad and now you have thousands and thousands of products that are for sale. Some are okay deals, some are good deals, some are amazing deals. Do you really want to go through and do all the work to look through all that stuff? So if we're doing our job, then we have made it really simple and we've done all the work for you.
You can come right to Slick Deals.
You can sort by the amount of votes it's getting from our users, and if you do that, then you'll just see, regardless of which ad scan it's in, just the best deals come to the top.
You know.
Sometimes it's just fun. Sometimes it's just competitive to get the best deal. You just you get a thrill out of knowing that you that you got that best deal. But there's also a practical element to it as well, which is sort of making people's dollars go further. So you're helping, uh, you know, slick Deals, we're helping you know, families sort of get it done right and kind of get the stuff they need, whether it's household items like they're tied detergent or whether it's you know, a gift
for for their kids, this gaming console. You know what, if your kid really wants, you know, that that PlayStation or that Xbox.
Right, they're not they're not cheap.
So go to slick deals, search PlayStation, see where the best deal is.
Yeah, we'll get you. We'll get you half the half the price.
Coupon codes do you guys? Do you have that on your side?
We do. We have all the coupon codes.
We we maintain, you know, pretty robust pages of the codes, whether it's you know, Macy's or really every retailer.
And how do you find those on your website? Because I'm always interested in those?
Yeah, So you go, you go up to the top navigation on the website and there's a there's a link called stores. You go there, you click on that, and then you're looking at sort of a view of let's say best Buy, and you're looking at all the codes we have for best Buy and all the deals we have at best Buy. So we kind of curate it all into that one spot for best Buy Specifically.
It kind of works both ways.
If I know where I'm shopping, I can also go to slick Deals to kind of find the deals for Macy's. Let's say shopping there right, great, Josh Myers, thanks so much for joining me on the podcast. Definitely check out Slick Deals the website. I have this thing bookmarked. I love looking at the front page deals. If you want a link to Slick Deals, you can go to my website. It's rich on tech dot tv, or check the show
notes and happy shopping on Black Friday. Hope you find everything that you're looking for, and don't forget about.
Cyber Monday as well.
Absolutely all right, Josh, thanks so much for joining me. I'll talk to you guys real shoe goo.
Bye. Yeah,