Hey Wadyuptoo! (We Launch Our Weblog!)

It is sort of fitting that we are choosing this Independence Day weekend to launch this new blog.  This blog is dedicated to help us become less dependent on the high prices at the stores when buying our every day grocery and sundry items.  Visit the “About Wadyuptoo” page for more information about our mission. 

Boy! We’re smarting at the size of the grocery bill for all the food we will consume at our picnics and BBQs this weekend.  An NPD study states that we as consumers are adjusting our spending behavior.  Well, $4.54 a gallon for regular gas (here in the Silicon Valley) will make you do that.  We don’t need a powerful research firm, like NPD, to tell us that.  Or maybe we do?

Yes, we are eating out less.  Staying closer to home this summer (stay-cations).  Looking for more coupons and specials.  And unfortunately, feeling more stressed about it all.  Putting even more attention into watching our pennies is not a fun job.  We would rather be watching the amazing fireworks.  Organizing coupons takes time.  Browsing through weekly ad circulars takes time.  Going from store to store takes time (and burns that $4.54 fuel quickly). 

One thing many of these research articles don’t mention is the value of information in helping us to save time and money.  The Internet is a great aggregator, however, more often then not a poor organizer of that mountain of information.  We know from examples of companies like Google and Ebay that if we could organize and harness that information, we can really empower the way we live our lives.

At Wadyuptoo we’ve built a site which can organize this information.  Information on products, prices and retailers,  along with their related sales, coupons and specials will be readily available.  We’ve also started to build a library of tips on stretching our food purchases, great recipes and neat shopping ideas.  And we will make this information available to you on your desktop or mobile devices.  If you were to do this on your own, the time to do it would add up quickly.  And we have to ask if spending 5-10 hours a week on this task is worth the savings. 

Last night there was a show on the rising economy of China and one of the rising entrepreneurs was talking about the monthly trek he would take to the Great Wall.  He marveled at its history and concept that it was built by a lot (take your concept of a lot and multiply it by 10) of people all doing their individual part.  The Internet is the epitome of this concept in that it lets us harness that same social power.  If we come together and each contribute 10-15 minutes a week of valuable information, imagine the power of the results!  Sites like TripAdvisor (travel), Wikipedia (encyclopedia) and Yelp (restaurant reviews) have already shown that this model works.  So we believe it can be done with grocery, drug store and mega-mart information.  If we could all share a little bit of information about where the hot buys are, shopping tips and thoughts about the products we buy, think of what a great reservoir of information that would be. 

We just need a vehicle to do that with.   It’s a formidable task, but we are willing to try.  We know if it was easy, someone would have done it before.  But our search of the Internet has not turned up any players of substance.  So we will be moving forward and listening closely to see if this is a concept that has merit.  We welcome your participation via comments and dialogue.  We will post on this blog when the site is available and hopefully you will take a look.

Thanks for reading our weblog and happy shopping!