By Emily Rodriguez
sac-ranger@alamo.edu
Flyerbug, a new user-driven social platform, has been launched to help consumers save money through comparative shopping.
Founder Raul Sukraj said the platform helps college students save money using everyday technology.
“I lived off campus (during college), food was one of those things that you have to buy,” he said. “The platform allows you to compare just about anything. It doesn’t have to be food-related things you can buy at a grocery store. It can be personal needs items.”
“There’s even beer listed on the platform,” Sukraj said.
Based in Toronto and New York, Flyerbug allows users to share and compare prices by ZIP code.
Users submit prices and vendors, and reliability is based on badges on the profile page, earned by user contribution to the database. Items users frequently update, like dairy, canned goods or baby items, are shown on the profile page.
Users can create a watch list to track products and follow other users for up-to-date prices on items.
“Folks who are watching those products, when they report prices on items, you get an email alert. It’s like Twitter or Facebook, instead of following friends, you’re following products,” Sukraj said.
Sukraj said Flyerbug could show deals that are not advertised in store circulars or commercials.
“We built it to help folks save on groceries, whether it’s time or money, but also help them discover some hidden deals that exist that unfortunately don’t make it into the fliers,” he said. “The average grocery store sells 50,000 products, about eight to 10 percent of them go on sale every week. That’s about 5,000 products that go on sale every single week.”
Sukraj said Flyerbug is working with retailers to increase the amount of sales accessed. A point system is in production to reward contributing users with gift cards to local retailers.
Visit Flyerbug.com or download the mobile app.