A startup company on St. John, www.MyVIDeals.com, will begin offering the kinds of benefits to local businesses and customers that social media sites such as Groupon and Living Social do on a global scale.
“It’s a way to stretch the buck,” said Prince Adams, who with his wife Rose, started the company last year.
Since local businesses operate on such a small margin, Adams said, deal buyers can expect to get about 50 percent off. He said on the mainland, Groupon and Living Social deals ranged from about 25 percent to 75 percent off.
According to Adams, local residents as well as visitors can benefit from the deals on MyViDeals since he envisions deals that appeal to both groups. He said he’s signed up restaurants, day sails, a spa, car rentals, transportation companies, and gift shops. There are also deals for health, dental and eye care.
The site will go live on Feb. 17, and businesses can sign up for free until 6 p.m. Feb. 14 to offer deals to potential customers. Adams said that once the free offer expires, MyViDeals’ rates will be about half of what businesses pay on the mainland.
Adams has already signed up slews of businesses on St. John and St. Thomas, and he expects to expand to St. Croix, the British Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico in the not-too-distant future.
According to Adams, larger companies with a national presence have been quick to sign up but the smaller locally-owned companies haven’t quite come around to thinking in terms of technology.
“The small guys need to stay competitive. They need to embrace new technology,” he said.
He said that in a place like the Virgin Islands, businesses depend on new customers to survive. Tourists will like those deals, and he said when the tourist season slows down, local residents will give them a try if they have a good deal.
Adams expects the business to grow virally, with people telling their friends about the deals. Those who send along a deal to someone else and they buy it will get credit called MyVIDeal bucks. Some deals require a minimum amount of purchases, so it will pay for people to make referrals.
And some merchants will offer Smartphone apps to make buying even easier, Adams said.
Adams, 44, is no stranger to the local business climate. He and his wife own Sweet Plantains Restaurant in Coral Bay, and he has a degree in marketing from the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York.
Both Adams were born in Brooklyn, where they return every year for a three-month hurricane-season sabbatical to recharge their culinary batteries. They met at Sheepshead Bay High School.
Rose Adams landed on St. John via Virgin Gorda. A graduate of the New York Restaurant School, she was working in New York when Little Dix Bay Resort went looking for someone to run its gourmet food store at Virgin Gorda Yacht Harbor.
When Little Dix Bay closed the store, she took a job as food and beverage manager at Cinnamon Bay Campground, then a sister property. That led to a job as restaurant manager at Caneel Bay Resort’s Sugar Mill restaurant.
They opened Sweet Plantains in 2005, son Jacob came along nine years ago, and now they’re looking to expand their business with MyVIDeals.
“My wife came up with the idea. Seventy-five percent of shoppers are women,” Adams said.
Adams can be reached by email at contact@myvideals.com, or by phone at 1-340-779-2577 or 1-340-514-1427, but Adams said email is quicker.
