SMACK a Jellyfish!?

Brian Wiegand and the folks at jellyfish.com have really created a stir (congrats on the big PR guys) with their reverse auction concept called Smack shopping (a smack is evidently what you call a group of jellyfish).

The way it works is they start with X units of a hot item and then start dropping the price.  The price drops until all of the units are sold.  You pay full price for the item to the designated retailer, then you get rebate jellyfish $ in your account.  Those funds are "on hold" until you are past the return timeframe (typically 60 days).  Interesting concept and it sure is generating buzz.

Here are some examples of past smacks:

• Xbox 360 - Someone in Madison (hey isn't that where Jellyfish is located?) was able to get the product for about 50% off.  Good luck ever getting that kind of a discount on an XB360 anywhere else.
• ipod Nano - Here, someone from Madison (hey what the heck) was able to get the product for 41% off!

It was interesting watching the buzz on this spread.  It started with Techcrunch and then from there, it was  here and here and here and here (and the list goes on).

How are they paying for this?  Well, they just raised some cash from VCs, so I suspect a good share of that is going to fund Smack. I'll try and interview Brian for a future post.