Groupon- and LivingSocial-type, just-in-time daily deal
sites are growing like blue plate specials, but, until now, there has
been no such Web-shopping
service devoted to the most Web-savvy, most affluent, well-travelled and
impulse-buying consumers: gay men. A new site, DirectMale.com, hopes to get first-mover
advantage.
The Washington, D.C.-based online voucher
company, which launched just under a month ago, is selling upscale goods
and services featuring local and national offers from
bars, clubs, restaurants, spas, salons, travel, hotels, cruises and much
more.
While the Direct Male site is new, the
service isn't. The 20-year-old company actually started
as a direct-mail business with a 100,000-person opt-in database, where
participating households got "card decks" in their mailboxes, with
offers from the likes of Jim Beam Brands, the National Gay and
Lesbian Travel Association, British Airways and GlaxoSmithKline.
"We
are the first national player in this space," says founder and CEO
Andrew Isen. "Last summer, when we began to
put everything together, we thought we would do it local but the gay
male market is so strong that we opted to go nationally out of the bag."
He says the niche market, because of the liquidity of its
population and its willingness to part with cash for the right products,
has become a much-coveted segment in the last two decades. "And because
gay men are brand loyal, [marketers] know the value of
targeting this segment."
Isen says that rather than
focus on deals-of-the-day the site will have a regular rotation of
timed offers. Isen says they are much more
affluent than the general market, with the gay male consumer earning
nearly double the average household income with 70% more disposable
income. The company says that in the U.S. there are about 12.3
million gay men over the age of 18, and 93% of them are active online
consumers.
He says among products and services that
are popular with gay men -- bespoke clothing that would
otherwise be hard to find, skin care, and personalized household
products and apparel, for example -- travel is one of the biggest. "We
are offering, for example, a trip to a gay-friendly resort in
Nicaragua. Travel is one of the biggest items and categories in the gay
segment. And it always has been." He points out that roughly 80% of gay
men have passports, which is double national average.
They travel substantially more than any other niche; the International
Gay and Lesbian Travel Association has 3,000 members. "Today, every
airline and hotel chain has gay-specific services. Winn Las
Vegas, for example, has a concierge dedicated to gay clientele."
Per
Isen, gay men are, per capita, on the Internet more than any other
niche segment. Direct Male is mobile
optimized. "The newest studies show that gay male consumers -- over 40%
-- will only use mobile smart devices to make web purchases. They will
only use smartphones or tablets."
