http://metarand.com/2007/09/25/relevant-mind-what-to-buy-on-the-web/ meta musings on tech, innovation, gadgets, lifestyle and the media arena Thu, 04 Dec 2008 00:30:19 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.5.1 http://metarand.com/2007/09/25/relevant-mind-what-to-buy-on-the-web/#comment-985 Bill Worple Fri, 05 Oct 2007 19:38:20 +0000 http://metarand.com/?p=109#comment-985 Hi Rand – First let me say Congratulations to the team at RelevantMind for their launch. I believe the market they're entering into is one ripe for growth and as you point out, it’s one where customers feel hurt. But as a founder of 3LUXE, I’m more than a little biased. We launched 3LUXE in June. We are in the same big space as alaTest and RelevantMind, but we’re taking a slightly different approach. We are an editorially driven site, with a social component. It was interesting hearing your story about your bike purchase and the influence your friends had on that purchase. In the conceptual stage of 3LUXE, we kept hitting on the idea that we all have friends who thoroughly research every product available before a purchase. And that we often ask for their opinion, knowing they did the research we didn’t have time (or desire) to do. At 3LUXE we want to become the online equivalent of that friend. Instead of inundating users with thousands of products, specs, and ratings in a category, our research team sifts through all of that for the user. After extensively researching a category, we provide reviews on our top three "Best Of" selections. Doing the research you would do, if you had more time. We have hundreds of categories live on the site and are adding more daily. To keep us in check and ensure we are publishing what users want, users vote on the selected products, "luxe it" or "leave it". The community also can leave comments, letting us and other visitors know what they think about the products and picks. Our “Best Of” selections are continuously changing as new products are introduced and we receive feedback from the community. Let me know if you have any thoughts or ideas. The site is always evolving and I would love to hear any feed back you have. Hi Rand – First let me say Congratulations to the team at RelevantMind for their launch. I believe the market they’re entering into is one ripe for growth and as you point out, it’s one where customers feel hurt.
But as a founder of 3LUXE, I’m more than a little biased. We launched 3LUXE in June. We are in the same big space as alaTest and RelevantMind, but we’re taking a slightly different approach. We are an editorially driven site, with a social component.
It was interesting hearing your story about your bike purchase and the influence your friends had on that purchase. In the conceptual stage of 3LUXE, we kept hitting on the idea that we all have friends who thoroughly research every product available before a purchase. And that we often ask for their opinion, knowing they did the research we didn’t have time (or desire) to do. At 3LUXE we want to become the online equivalent of that friend.
Instead of inundating users with thousands of products, specs, and ratings in a category, our research team sifts through all of that for the user. After extensively researching a category, we provide reviews on our top three “Best Of” selections. Doing the research you would do, if you had more time.
We have hundreds of categories live on the site and are adding more daily. To keep us in check and ensure we are publishing what users want, users vote on the selected products, “luxe it” or “leave it”. The community also can leave comments, letting us and other visitors know what they think about the products and picks. Our “Best Of” selections are continuously changing as new products are introduced and we receive feedback from the community.
Let me know if you have any thoughts or ideas. The site is always evolving and I would love to hear any feed back you have.

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