HAILEY, IDAHO – WinUru, Inc., announced today the launch of a trailblazing, online shopping destination that enables online shoppers to win cash prizes while discovering and buying a wide variety of products from small and large etailers.
WinUru is a “gamified marketplace” platform that leverages proprietary, win-money, promotional games to cost-effectively attract, retain and motivate buyers to purchase products from online retailers. The platform provides etailers with a fun, engaging and more rewarding way to tell their stories and sell their goods. WinUru has been a pioneer in the emerging “shoppertainment” category where advanced game mechanics, data science and machine learning are applied to increase sales and loyalty.
WinUru’s first game is “Bingo-inspired” and features an animated, price-slicing, ninja hostess named Winny Dinero and her sidekick, Sammy Yatta, a jolly sumo wrestler who drops Bingo balls and daubs Bingo cards. In each 10- to 12-minute shopping game consumers win prizes that range from one-dollar to over twenty-five dollars. While the games are free to play, they are a progressive sweepstakes, meaning the more the players buy, the more they can win. WinUru runs thousands of games every day. The game, which was in beta test earlier this year, officially launched today.
“We’re pioneers in an emerging space known as ‘shoppertainment’ that aims to make online shopping a lot more fun,” said WinUru CEO Will Gardenswartz. “Some call what we do a ‘winfomercial’ others say we put QVC, the Price is Right and a massively multiplayer game like World of Warcraft in a blender.”
Shopping games like WinUru’s have a track record of success in Asia where they have helped sellers reduce marketing costs and increase customer loyalty. “The true inspiration for WinUru comes from Japan where shopping games like Fukubukuro have been around for over a hundred years,” continued Gardenswartz. “We also see a legendary promotional game here in the U.S. every couple of years when McDonald’s runs its Monopoly game.”
“For most etailers, promotional games are too risky and complicated to run,” said WinUru Vice President of Merchandising Ami Marie Granger Welch. “WinUru takes all that complexity away.”
Currently, WinUru’s games are only available as a website at www.WinUru.com. WinUru recently closed a series seed round led by the Sun Valley Idaho Band of Angels.
About WinUru
WinUru is an interactive, gamified, content commerce platform that brings the power and excitement of promotional games – used by 70% of consumer-facing Fortune 1000 companies – to every etailer on the web. WinUru’s proprietary, social, live, free-to-play, win-real-money games cost-effectively attract, engage and delight consumers to showcase and sell a wide variety of goods and services. WinUru is based in Hailey, ID and Philadelphia. www.WinUru.com
