Chinese website hands stock and pricing decisions to customers

Handsup.cn aims to hand power over to customers by asking them to recommend products they want to buy, as well as the price tag.

Among the many opportunities presented by online retail, we’ve seen a wave of innovations aiming to hand more control of the process over to customers themselves. Body Shop Bids recently demonstrated the concept with its platform enabling car owners to solicit bids for repairs before choosing where to take their vehicle. In China, deal site Handsup.cn now aims to hand power over to the consumer by asking them to recommend products and services they want to buy, as well as the price tag. Online retailers and daily deal sites usually have a limited number of items on sale, curated by the merchant, but the concept behind Handsup.cn is to invite users to submit and vote on the products they would like to see on its virtual shelves. Hoping to create an “infinite” range of available products and services, the site also allows consumers to suggest how much they would like to pay. A greater number of voters for a particular product increases the likelihood of the price being lower. Launched in December last year, Handsup.cn perhaps goes further than we’ve seen before by handing over stock decisions and pricing guidance to its customers. This is a model to look out for, and try out, around the world! Spotted by: Smith Alan