Introducing a new gear price comparison tool

[jon]

I want to preface this post that we here at cc.com have been huge advocates for our local retailers since the beginning and always encourage you to spend you money there when it makes sense. Please support cc.com's sponsors when you can. These guys work really hard and are in a very competitive sphere.

 

So that said most of you probably shop online. Today I'd like to show you a fun project that I've been working on that I think you peeps might really like. For the last few months I've been playing around with ideas on how to find the best deals on gear when you decide to shop online. And here it is what I came up with.

 

http://cascadeoutside.com

 

What I love about this is that it is fast and displays all the information you need in one screen. It also works on your mobile device. And with the help of some magic it is fast as hell. There are other sources for reviews, but I don't think anything beats this as far as getting prices.

 

As you may know we have another price tool here which uses the same set of data. The problem I found from a developer standpoint was that it is really hard to get a bunch of products to align into one price comparison, so you are left with doing some work to figure out the best price. When you are getting data from 50 different shops they all name things differently. It's a difficult problem that I can't solve; at Amazon there is a huge team that works on this very thing.

 

When I was working on the Trip Report search tool, which uses a similar front end, a light bulb went off that this same interface might work for searching for gear prices. The thinking goes that instead of writing a bunch of code to figure out how to get the right comparison, why not use the best computer there is: your brain. I spent the last couple weeks building this out and I'm pretty happy. I'm sure MS Excel users will feel right at home. If not, I have a couple examples and tutorials. If you are still stuck I'd love your feedback on it.

 

If you really like this I'd love it if you liked it on Facebook and/or Google+ and told your friends about. And yes when you use this you help out cc.com. If it's not obvious we are really investing a lot time and money in making this place better; it kind of deserves it!

 

A few features I will be adding in the near feature:

• Local retailer sale items
  
• Use of the OR operator and other advanced search syntax.
  
• Review Rating Summaries
  
• Price change notifications