Last week I posted about the new online community BoardRiderLounge. I was interested in learning more about the technology behind their aggregated search for the best deals on board gear.
Quite a few new companies are trying to get into the outdoor gear deal search and aggregation business. Relative newcomer Outdoor Gear Engine has amassed a database of over 300,000 SKUs on products from over 80 online retailers. The deals on the site are updated daily and they hope to continually add more retailers and products.
New website iTaggit is not actually gear specific but it allows you to do more than just search for deals. The sites ValueRange It utility searches the most recent eBay and Amazon selling prices for your item and returns a value range including low, average and high. The real benefit for this site I feel is if you are looking to price and sell gear you may not need anymore. The site will help you automatically list your items on eBay, craigslist, oodle and more.
The question remains, can you beat out a simple Google Product Search to look for deals if you know exactly what you are looking for? To put this to the test, I searched for deals on the Marmot Precip Jacket with OutdoorGearEngine, iTaggit, Google and also the new Amazon Outdoor Recreation Store. OGE returned a deal of $59.99 at Moosejaw. iTaggit showed the lowest recent selling price as $55, with an average value of $70. Google found a price of $57.50 at a site called 6pm.com. And finally a direct search on the Amazon Outdoor Recreation Store gave me a price of $49.99 but only on select colors and sizes.
So does Google win for being able to search the most online retailers? Where do you search for the best deals on gear? I would love to hear.