(Reuters) — Rue La La, an online flash-sales company partly owned by eBay Inc., is expanding its local offers business, stepping up competition with Groupon and LivingSocial.
Rue Local will offer one deal a day on local products, services and events in San Francisco, Chicago and Miami. That adds to current locations in New York City, Los Angeles and Washington DC, Boston, Philadelphia and Seattle.
Rue San Francisco is set to launch on Wednesday. Rue Miami will start Aug. 9 and Rue Chicago later this month.
Rue La La started as a fashion flash-sales website, offering discounts on women's apparel for very short periods. It has added men's clothing, home goods and other products since then.
With Rue Local, the company is trying to offer its members more products and services in a similar way to daily deal leaders Groupon and LivingSocial, part owned by Amazon.com. Flash-sale company Gilt Groupe, which initially focused on high-end fashion, has expanded in the daily deal area too, with Gilt City.
"We're trying to cover everything for members, to be an editor for people's lives," Mark McWeeny, president of Rue Local, said in a recent interview with Reuters.
Rue La La has over four million members and almost two million of those have signed up for Rue Local offers.
Rue La La was owned by GSI Commerce, an e-commerce company that was acquired by eBay this year. After the deal, eBay said it would sell 70 percent of Rue La La to a new, private holding company run by GSI chief executive Michael Rubin.
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