Will Buyapowa's co-buying platform change how we shop online?

A new buying platform called Buyapowa launches in the UK today, but unlike group buying favourites Groupon and Living Social, Buyapowa offers its users heavily discounted prices the more people who sign up.

It’s called co-buying and it means that the more people who opt in to buy a product, the cheaper it becomes for everyone, giving normal customers cheap and cheerful bulk buying discounts.

Granted the idea is pretty similar to group buying platforms, but there’s definitely an exciting sense of everyone coming together to drive prices down. This means there’s also quite a big social element to Buyapowa, as users are encouraged to get more people to buy the product they want. No matter how sneaky you might think that is on Buyapowa’s part, you can’t deny it’s a pretty clever selling tactic, get someone else to promote the products on your site for you.

Now be warned, you can’t drive an expensive bit of tech down to a few pounds, but the “best prices” listed next to each item are pretty low considering how much you’d pay for the products if you found them in a regular store.

The interesting thing about Buyapowa is that you don’t have to settle for the products already listed, you can nominate products you’d like to co-buy and if it gets enough nominations, the Buyapowa team will try and source it. The same goes for products that are hard to find and only available in certain countries.

From what I can see of the platform so far, it’s a good option for cosmetic and make up lovers with deals from Benefit live at the moment and others from Chanel and YSL coming up over the next few weeks, but overall there’ll be a real mix of brands and products once the platform gets going.

We’re not sure whether Buyapowa is going to change the way we shop online, but it’ll certainly be interesting to see just how low some great products get in the future.