Bargain-hunting site pegs success to dour economy

The CheapToday.com website points consumers to a few hundred deals picked by editors from over 200 online suppliers, retailers, and clearinghouses of apparel and other products.

As dour economic news continues to make headlines, Milenko Beslic of Brookline grows more confident that his bargain-hunting website will succeed.

CheapToday.com, which launches today, is an online directory pointing consumers to a few hundred deals hand-picked by editors who each day scour more than 200 online suppliers, retailers, and clearinghouses of apparel, electronics, and other products.

"This is a better time than if the economy was very strong - because people are looking for deals," said Beslic, the president and cofounder of Cheap Today Inc., who resigned in April as US director of technology for Cheapflights.com to ramp up the new site.

The Internet is already cluttered with thousands of websites hawking discounted consumer goods or helping shoppers find red-lined items elsewhere in cyberspace. But Boston's CheapToday says it offers a broader and better range of bargains because it doesn't sell any merchandise - so it can highlight the best offers around rather than worrying about unloading its own items - and it uses people, rather than algorithms, to pluck out deals.

That can be a plus for consumers since it's hard to write a search engine algorithm to decipher what's suddenly fashionable. But CheapToday lists $400 eyeglasses worn by Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin for $49.99 on eyebuy direct.com.

"You, too, can look like Sarah Palin," said David Soskin, the director of CheapToday and former chief executive of Cheapflights. "That's something a good editor can find."

Analysts say CheapToday's lack of inventory can also be a weakness. The odds of clicking on outdated or erroneous deals can be greater because they'll be monitored and manually updated by a four-person editorial team rather than automated Internet bots.

"They've got a lot of potential opportunity to create less-than-expected results because they don't control the inventory, because they don't control the price, because they don't control the fulfillment, the shipment, and the ultimate delivery," said Marshal Cohen, chief industry analyst at NPD Group Inc., a provider of consumer and retail data.

"All it takes is one disbelievable experience, and you'll never return."

CheapToday chairman Hugo Burge, who also founded the US version of Cheapflights.com in Boston in 2003, says there are plenty of people who will appreciate the new website. "Twenty percent of US citizens have passports, but 100 percent of US citizens have wallets that are hurting from the economy," he said.

CheapToday hopes to appeal to people like Bard-Alan Finlan of Rockport, who searches the Internet for discounted computer parts and laser printer toner cartridges. In Boston's brick-and-mortar stores, "they're all list price and above, so it forces people to go online to get the best deal," said Finlan, 53.

But sometimes the best deal can be too good to be true. Yesterday afternoon, CheapToday said 6PM.com was selling 1,092 Adidas athletic shoes "priced as low as $9.49, with no shoe over $34.95." The Globe clicked the link about six hours after it was posted, only to find 852 of the Adidas styles priced for more than the purported maximum price. The most expensive style cost $126.50.

CheapToday spokeswoman Jillian Trundy said the site is still working out glitches. Still, Burge told the Globe earlier, "We live or die by the quality of our deals."

Nicole C. Wong can be reached at nwong@globe.com.