It looks like more jobs have hit the cutting room floor in Australia’s daily deal industry. Last week, Spreets eliminated most of its sales staff as part of a plan to move to an affiliate model, aggregating deals from other providers. No information was given on the exact number of job cuts
This news follows closely on the heels of LivingSocial’s recent cuts of 24 jobs in Australia and 400 worldwide, including 160 at the company’s Washington D.C. headquarters.
As Australia ushered in 2012, there were over one hundred daily deal providers serving up bargains to eager Aussie consumers. Now, according to analyst firm Telsyte, that number has dwindled to 40 with 95 percent of the industry’s revenue being generated by the eight top players, Groupon, LivingSocial, Spreets, Scoopon, Cudo, Deals.com.au, Ouffer and Ourdeal.
“It’s the consolidation that we all expected as it’s increasingly a harder market to compete in . . . the way I see it there’s only space for a few players,” said Telsyte’s senior research manager, Sam Yip.
In January 2011 it was announced that Yahoo!7 had acquired Spreets for $40 million. You might wonder if the company’s two founders, Dean McEvoy and Justus Hammer, didn’t see the writing on the wall since they both exited the company this past June.
McEvoy told FairFax that he was “shocked and saddened” by the recent news.
