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Ask HN: Feedback on ToutPourMoniPad.com (ipad case finder for the french market)

thibaut_barrere 16y ago
Feedback (even graphical - sorry it's in french) is most welcome! http://www.toutpourmonipad.com http://www.toutpourmonipad.com A couple of months ago I was looking for an iPad case. I found a lot of french sites selling those, but not a single easily searchable place (eg: max budget, material...). I found (thanks to HN) http://ipadcasefinder.com/ http://ipadcasefinder.com/, but the shipping costs of most sellers to France made the purchase not worth it. So I decided to build something for the french market! Technically, it's an ETL (extract/transform/load) back-end that stores in MongoHQ, the front-end is based on Heroku, Sinatra, jQuery etc. It's just a V1, a lot of changes are planned (search by "use case", for instance).
- lachyg 16y ago
  The site is very close to my site, I guess it's not too close though. Some other guy copied the WHOLE site. I hope it works out for you. WordPress? What's your sidebar plugin? Good luck, it's a tough market.
  - thibaut_barrere 16y ago
    Thanks for the comment! Well I wouldn't have started it if the shipping costs were low. There was an obvious gap here (picking partners that ship to france), which I filled. I definitely agree the idea is useful and interesting (given the feedback I got). The site is making pocket money more or less (very far from your figures), and the market is very tough, filled by niche blogs here in France. It was very interesting to make and I learnt a lot in the process, though! It's not a WordPress - it's a custom application I developed wholly from scratch myself using Sinatra, MongoDB, Ruby (the back-end, the views, javascript/css etc), and which is heavily customizable (this is already the fourth revision of the site). This made the ability to filter by manually entered prices a lot easier to implement, for instance. I plan to do regular updates on this and let it grow slowly, see where it goes.
jeb 16y ago
What's with the iPad Case Finder startups? Is it some hot new market or what?
DotSauce 16y ago
iPad is a trademarked term and you are running the risk of legal issues with Apple. You may want to think of an alternative domain name.
- thibaut_barrere 16y ago
  I hope that won't happen. I'll think about alternate domain names in case it does. Thanks for the advice.

Feedback (even graphical - sorry it's in french) is most welcome! http://www.toutpourmonipad.com http://www.toutpourmonipad.com A couple of months ago I was looking for an iPad case. I found a lot of french sites selling those, but not a single easily searchable place (eg: max budget, material...). I found (thanks to HN) http://ipadcasefinder.com/ http://ipadcasefinder.com/, but the shipping costs of most sellers to France made the purchase not worth it. So I decided to build something for the french market! Technically, it's an ETL (extract/transform/load) back-end that stores in MongoHQ, the front-end is based on Heroku, Sinatra, jQuery etc. It's just a V1, a lot of changes are planned (search by "use case", for instance).

lachyg 16y ago
The site is very close to my site, I guess it's not too close though. Some other guy copied the WHOLE site. I hope it works out for you. WordPress? What's your sidebar plugin? Good luck, it's a tough market.
- thibaut_barrere 16y ago
  Thanks for the comment! Well I wouldn't have started it if the shipping costs were low. There was an obvious gap here (picking partners that ship to france), which I filled. I definitely agree the idea is useful and interesting (given the feedback I got). The site is making pocket money more or less (very far from your figures), and the market is very tough, filled by niche blogs here in France. It was very interesting to make and I learnt a lot in the process, though! It's not a WordPress - it's a custom application I developed wholly from scratch myself using Sinatra, MongoDB, Ruby (the back-end, the views, javascript/css etc), and which is heavily customizable (this is already the fourth revision of the site). This made the ability to filter by manually entered prices a lot easier to implement, for instance. I plan to do regular updates on this and let it grow slowly, see where it goes.

jeb 16y ago

What's with the iPad Case Finder startups? Is it some hot new market or what?

DotSauce 16y ago

iPad is a trademarked term and you are running the risk of legal issues with Apple. You may want to think of an alternative domain name.

thibaut_barrere 16y ago
I hope that won't happen. I'll think about alternate domain names in case it does. Thanks for the advice.