Chicago Entrepreneurs Join Forces to Launch Bizy™, the Daily Deal Industry's First Dedicated Small-Business Deal Site, With Initial Focus on the Chicagoland Market

CHICAGO, March 10, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- Gary Slack and Lou Friedmann, two Chicago entrepreneurs, are teaming up to launch Bizy™, the nation's first dedicated small-business daily and weekly deal site, in the Chicagoland area on March 28 at www.bizydeal.com.

Bizy initially will focus on connecting business sellers with small business owners, a notable area of expertise for Bizy co-founder Slack, whose b-to-b marketing services agency, Slack and Company, helped launch eBay Business, eBay's small-business portal, and has done small-business marketing for nearly a dozen other firms, including Google and PayPal.

"As a longtime b-to-b marketer, I have nearly 25 years of experience helping connect business buyers and sellers in a multitude of industries using many pathways and channels," said Slack. "Daily or weekly deal sites are another new, exciting and very promising connecting channel in the ever-evolving business-to-business ecosystem."

"For many small business owners, what they save can be a big part of what they earn," Slack noted. "We're shaping Bizy to be an attractive alternative purchasing channel for millions of small-business owners for a wide array of products and services—office equipment and supplies, IT network equipment, software and hardware, mobile communications devices, shipping, payroll services, legal and accounting services, travel, car rental, banking, credit cards, insurance and more."

At the same time, according to Bizy co-founder Lou Friedmann, a longtime direct marketer and former executive vice president of marketing with optionsXpress, "We believe b-to-b product and service sellers of all kinds will see Bizy as an intriguing new way to introduce themselves to large numbers of aggregated small-business buyers, generate substantial sales spikes, help deplete product inventories and prime the pump for successful new product and service launches."

There is a higher barrier to entry in starting a pure-play b-to-b deal site, Slack said, noting that may be why there are an estimated 230 consumer-focused deal sites but only a few niche b-to-b deal sites operating today. "To be successful with a b-to-b deal site, you need to understand enterprise sellers, small-business buyers, distribution channels, procurement processes and channel-conflict issues."

"We believe our deep understanding of the b-to-b space gives us a leg up on consumer-focused deal sites that might wish to expand into b-to-b," Slack said. "We know how to efficiently reach large volumes of small business owners, and we also know and have relationships with hundreds of enterprise and middle-market marketers whose job is to grow their small-business customer base."

Bizy is being incubated in Slack and Company's offices and already has three employees. The company is ramping up quickly with the intent of going live with its first deals on March 28. The www.bizydeal.com site is in development, with Slack and Company's digital, creative and media teams providing various forms of support.

Besides leading small-business marketing initiatives for numerous enterprise companies, Slack has served on the advisory panel for the annual conference of the Enterprise Council on Small Business, a division of the Corporate Executive Board. He also is currently in the second year of a two-year term as the national chairman of the Business Marketing Association, the business-marketing profession's leading professional society. And he has been named seven years in a row to Bob magazine's annual list of the nation's Top 100 Most Influential B-to-B Marketers.

SOURCE Slack and Company