In less than a month, Groupon's highly-lauded stocks have plummeted from their IPO sale price of $28 closing today at $15.24, down 46% since their November 4th initial public offering. That's the good news.The bad news is that recovery, if any, will be short-lived. We anticipated bad times, declaring that Groupon was not IPO-ready, but it appears that things are worse than we thought. Since going public, Groupon has done very little to enhance or promote their product the way that a newly-public company normally would. Their "big launch" this month of an "exciting new feature" is, for the most part, unknown to everyone. Why? Because their marketing blitz yielded this video:
As of the writing of this article, it has just over 1250 views.
The real clue to Groupon's lack of effort or understanding came with Black Friday and Cyber Monday. Competitor Living Social pulled out all stops to gain attention on the most important 4-day shopping weekend of the year. Groupon's offerings were feeble by comparison.
If Groupon is going to succeed, they cannot continue playing the role of the big kid on their block. They're in a different arena now with investors to appease and analysts to impress. CEO Andrew Mason's net worth has dropped nearly $600 million since the IPO. Will that be enough to get his attention, or will Groupon continue to flounder on the ticker and fail in their media relations?
