Posted by mrgoldenbrown
I was trying out the new facebook app and noticed that there is no listing for EMS brand items. I understand that it might be silly to list prices for EMS gear on spadout, since only EMS will be selling EMS gear. REI and MEC are also missing from the brands list, both in the facebook app and on the 'shop by brand ' page of the main site. However, REI is listed as a brand in the drop down if you navigate to the sleeping bags page.

Now, I know EMS and REI and MEC are evil chain stores (in decreasing order of evilness) but i have cherrypicked what i consider quality gear at some outrageous prices from them. For example, my EMS brand sleeping bag has a pertex shell, some high fill down, weighs 2lbs, and was actually affordable. I have slept in it at it's rated temp of 20F and was comfy.) I noticed the lack of EMS gear when I went to brag about my trusty bag in my facebook gear closet.

So I guess I was just wondering if there was a reason for not having EMS gear in there, or if it was just super low priority since it is sold at only one store. Also, I probably have an inflated sense of EMS's overall market power, since I can walk to 3 different EMS's from my apt.

marks

Cred: 40569

Posted: January 20th, 2008

Quote, Reply

Thanks for the feedback. To make Spadout cost effective we developed software called Veta4.

"Veta4, an in-house application, gives Spadout the competitive edge by automatically predicting currently unlisted products and automatically adding them. We do not manually add any products or prices at Spadout."

This works excellent for products that are listed on multiple retailers (because we can look for name similarities but if a product is only listed on one retailer the application cannot determine an accurate relationship and therefore does not add it).

This is a problem for retailer level branded products (EMS, REI, Moosejaw etc.). To date there hasn't been a driving need because a price comparison website isn't very interesting when the product is only sold at one retailer. Now that Spadout is expanding and becoming an excellent review resource the value in having retailer-branded products is increasing so we are looking into possibilities. EMS has directly contacted us expressing a desire for this.

So the short answer is: We are not excluding retailer level products due to the "evil chain" mentality. We are looking into cross-promotional options for these products but this feature is still a few months out.

Thanks again for the feedback,
Mark - Spadout.com