Hey, guys!  

Today, we’re going to take a closer look at a feature we recently launched within the Cartpool department, Mini Rally. Like its sibling program, Cartpool Rally, Cartpool Mini Rally is also set up to facilitate the communication and understanding between sellers and shoppers. While Cartpool Rally works mostly from the merchant’s side, his little brother, Mini Rally, is built the other way around: the shoppers draft a deal and present to the sellers. With the underlying Cartpool framework, Mini Rally makes this process fairly effortless, especially when multiple shoppers are involved. On principle, you may draft a Mini Rally on any website, thanks to Dawn, our in-house intelligent guild of merchants, and Brahms. In practice, it is going to be a process for some as Dawn is completely young and fresh. We are not getting into the technical stuff here - let’s just see how Mini Rallies work and how you can use it to your advantage.

Only Mofficers can initiate Mini Rallies. This access control is put in place mainly to fight against spammers and keep this feature functional for people that really need it. Upgrading to a Mofficer account is completely free and easy. Then next you will need to have a Cartpool event. If you do not know how to put together a Cartpool event, here’s a video to walk you through that quickly. Note that we’ve updated the system numerous times since this early video was made, but the main procedure stays the same.

(If you do not want to use an extension, then you’ll have to wait a little when we process the website into Dawn. We do encourage you to try the extension as it best exemplifies the concept of MOFFAS and what it means to be an empowered Internet user.)

1. Open the Event Admin panel and click Organize Mini Rally:

2. You can see the layout looks like a Bill page (we are using a mock event):

3. Find out the information of the merchant. If the merchant is indexed (by Dawn) like this site, which is not our partner or associated with us in any way, it means MOFFAS is optimized for this domain. It could also mean that we have a better chance at a successful Mini Rally. Sometimes, there are websites that reject any contact through third parties, which is understandable, it will be noted here and Mini Rallies will be disabled for such sellers (you can still reach out yourself).

4. Discuss with your group and draft a reasonable offer.

         While it is always nice to keep the prices accurate, everything done here is just a proposal. If the merchant is to accept the offer, it will be based on their own prices.

5. Meet the minimum requirements. Sellers are busy and will only be able to entertain serious offers. If there’s a commitment fee requirement imposed, you will have to pay it in Beytos, which will be returned to you in a couple of days. In the meanwhile, Catnap will also monitor the requests and automatically filter out spams (inconsistent orders, low total sum, etc.).

6. After submitting the draft, you can go to your Moffice to see how the Rallies are going. If the merchant responds, we will send out an email to you too.
7. Once the merchant shows preliminary interest, we will put the two of you together and step out of the way. The commitment fee, if any, will be returned to your account. Your transaction, if it is going to happen, will likely be done using a manual sales order, which is available in every e-commerce framework. Make sure you are only paying to the merchant and do not trust any third parties. We do not charge either side for the sales.

If you do not feel comfortable with us sharing your email and account ID with the merchant when the draft is accepted, do not initiate a Mini Rally. While we still consider setting up a communication channel for Rallies and, coming soon, Cartwheel, ultimately the final transaction can only happen between you and the merchant, who will need to know who their customer is to execute the order.