Group purchases
Get the bulk price on a group purchase without fronting the money
Bulk prices need bulk numbers. Crowd lets a street, a school or a club reach the supplier's minimum order together, so everyone pays less and nobody carries the risk of ordering too many.
The problem
Group purchases fall apart between 'who's interested?' and 'who's paying?'. One person offers to coordinate, gets 30 vague yeses, orders 30 units, and then ten people go quiet. The coordinator is left covering the shortfall or chasing payments for weeks. The result is that most group purchases never happen twice.
Why a threshold fixes it
- Set the target to the supplier's minimum order quantity or the price-break threshold. The purchase only commits once that number is reached.
- A deadline keeps the group purchase moving. People act when they can see the clock and the counter climbing.
- No money changes hands on Crowd. Everyone pays the coordinator or the supplier directly, but only after the target is hit and the order is definitely going ahead.
- The link works in any group: a street WhatsApp, a school year-group chat, an allotment society email, a Reddit community.
- One join per device, rate-limited by IP, stops the casual double-tap from inflating the count.
Examples
Tap one to start →- If 20 people say yes……we'll order solar panels together and get the trade price of £3,400 per install instead of £4,200.20 solar installs at trade price. Use as template
- If 50 people say yes……we'll buy school uniform sweatshirts at £6 each instead of £11 by hitting the 50-unit price break.50 sweatshirts at the school price. Use as template
- If 30 people say yes……we'll order a bulk pallet of logs for the lane at £95 a tonne instead of £140.30 households sharing a pallet. Use as template
How to do it
- 1
Get the price breaks and minimum order from the supplier. The threshold where the price drops is your target.
- 2
Create the action with that number, the unit price in the description, and a deadline that gives you time to place the order.
- 3
Share the link in the group. People join when they are genuinely in, because they know the order will only happen if the number fills.
- 4
Once the target is hit, collect payment through whatever you normally use and place the order. If it doesn't fill, nobody is out of pocket.
Questions
- How is this different from the group buy page?
- The group buy page focuses on reaching a supplier's minimum order quantity. This page covers the broader idea of group purchasing power: using a threshold to unlock a better price on anything, from solar panels to school uniform, where the discount kicks in at a certain number of buyers.
- Does Crowd handle the payments?
- No, and that is deliberate. Crowd counts commitments. Once the target is reached, collect money however suits your group: a payment link, a bank transfer, cash to the coordinator. Keeping money out of the threshold step is what makes joining frictionless.
- What if someone joins and then changes their mind?
- A join is a promise, not a contract. Some drop-off is normal, so set the target slightly above the true minimum if you want a buffer. In practice a public count with a deadline gets far more honest answers than a poll, because people know the order will actually happen.
- Can a business use this to run a group buy for customers?
- Yes. A small shop or installer can use Crowd to gather commitments for a bulk order, then place it once the number is reached. It's a low-risk way to offer a group discount without holding stock.
Also used for
Ready to set a number?
One link. Anonymous. No accounts. If the number doesn't fill before the deadline, nothing happens and nobody is on the hook.