Rogers Digital Media has launched RDeals.ca, a website offering both local and national daily deals on clothing, magazines and other consumer products.
RDeals will offer items for up to 90 per cent off the original price, Rogers said.
“With RDeals, we are offering savings on top, quality brands and seamlessly connecting customers, wherever they are, to merchants across the country,” Jason Tafler, Rogers Media’s chief digital officer, said in a statement.
Rogers Digital Media is a unit of Rogers Communications Inc., which also owns Citytv.
The decision to launch RDeals comes at a time of growth for the Canadian deals industry. Still in their infancy (deals sites didn’t emerge here until last year), deal sites raked in $26 million in sales in June, valuing the Canadian market at approximately $300 million a year, according to website
mydealbag.com.
Mydealbag — which aggregates daily deals websites offers — reports that close to 700,000 items were sold in June at an average of $34.50 a piece.
The
first deal up for grabs on RDeals is a $25 Chapters Indigo gift card plus two year-long magazine subscriptions from eight publications, including Today’s Parent, Flare and Chatelaine. The price: $32.
Other RDeals that are being offered in the Greater Toronto Area this month include: 50 per cent off a chocolate-filled gift basket from the Gourmet Gift Basket Store; a one-hour portrait session plus 75 prints from Sundari Photography for $65; and 65-per-cent off clothing at Toronto menswear store GreenShag.
GreenShag co-founder Neil McPhedran said he was excited to partner with the website.
“As a local retailer, we’re always looking for innovative ways to bring quality customers into our shop.”
Earlier this month, U.S.-based deals giant Groupon Inc. went public with an initial public offering that pegged the company at more than $12-billion US. The decision to go public came after it turned down a reported $6-billion takeover offer from Google Inc.
More information on RDeals can be found at rdeals.ca, facebook.com/RDeals or twitter.com/RDealsToronto