GrabOne in liquidation, no refunds for unredeemed vouchers

Thursday, 16 October 2025

Online retailer GrabOne has been placed in liquidation due to funding constraints, but one retail expert said the company had become irrelevant in the modern market.

Liquidators Daniel Stoneman and Neale Jackson of Calibre Partners said in a messge on the company’s website they were immediately starting a sales process for the company's business and assets.

As a result, GrabOne “will not be promoting any existing or future deals whilst in liquidation”, they said.

Customers who held unredeemed vouchers would not be refunded, the liquidators said.

“Consumers will need to take steps themselves - including contacting individual merchants - to assess how unredeemed vouchers will be treated.”

The liquidators would not “adopt any agreement you had with the company personally or otherwise”, and the agreement remained between the customer and the company.

GrabOne was founded by Shane Bradley in 2010 as a daily deal website. It was initially launched as a 50/50 joint venture with media company NZME which eventually took full ownership.

The company grew quickly to become a leading player in the ecommerce market.

It was sold to Global Marketplace in 2021 for $17.5 million.

Bradley reportedly launched GrabOne within four weeks after seeing the massive success and growth of Groupon and Livingsocial in North America and Europe.

GrabOne sold a variety of deals and vouchers on experiences, including retail, dining, activities, travel and accommodation. It had more than 600,000 unique visitors per month.

Retail expert Chris Wilkinson of First Retail Group said voucher holders were likely to find it difficult to redeem their vouchers because retailers may not have been paid by GrabOne.

GrabOne had become a relic of the past when retailers used the voucher site to get rid of left over stock, Wilkinson said.

The dynamics of the market had changed significantly with the arrival of ecommerce giants such as Amazon, AliExpress and Temu.

Many big businesses that would previously have used GrabOne to get rid of remaining stock had tightened their models. “They just don't have that kind of stuff any more. So the opportunities for GrabOne in an increasingly crowded marketplace diminished quickly,” he said.

When GrabOne launched it offered showstopping deals from local merchants, typically a beauty package, or cafe offer that was heavily discounted “with the idea of generating some good cash for the businesses, or for getting rid of stuff that maybe they had too much of”.

GrabOne would also secure, for example, 100,000 charcoal grills from a third party supplier to sell on their behalf, with no risk for GrabOne.

The question was how successful the business had been in recent years, he said.

GrabOne had not been a talking point among consumers for some time. “Retail has evolved massively in the past 10 years.”

NZME had potentially seen that it was an exciting concept for a period of time, “but like a lot of technology based solutions, something will come along to eclipse it and steal the limelight and grab consumers’ attention”.