On the subject of online shopping, don’t we already have all the tools we need? Amazon and eBay pretty much cover it, but people are always thinking of new ways to penetrate the market. The advent of the scanning feature for the smartphone has sparked plenty of brainstorming and opens up all kinds of previously unforeseen doors.

Welcome ClearanceKart: an interesting new perspective on e-shopping. As the scanning device gains popularity, so might ClearanceKart. Whenever you come across a deeply discounted item in a store, you scan the product and simply add it to the ClearanceKart site via the mobile app. You then set a higher price to be charged for the item, but still at a discount to the usual retail price. Thus, every time you find a great deal in a store is an opportunity to become a ClearanceKart seller and make some money. An additional benefit of being a member is that it partners with other websites like Amazon to offer the superb deals found there. Think of it as something that offers you deals directly while also sourcing deals from other sites to maximize customer satisfaction. Making things even more convenient is that all a buyer has to do is click “Buy” and he or she is taken directly to their PayPal checkout page to ensure a quick and seamless shopping experience.

As ClearanceKart hints, their service is tailored to Black Friday and the holiday season as a whole. Certainly great discounts can be found at any time, but there just might be an off-putting contrast in discounted product availability through the site between the holidays and the rest of the year. Also, when buyers see products for sale, each product displays the specific percent that has been discounted. These numbers may very well be honest rebates compared to what the MSRP is, but each retailer can charge whatever they want for a product upon its introduction. There may be a huge disparity between stores such that an item has been discounted 30-percent at one store and 50-percent at another.

While only in alpha stage, ClearanceKart already evokes several concerns and thoughts of potential drawbacks. First of all, in what was a major issue for eBay in its early years, what’s to stop people from marketing knockoff items at prices expected of the real thing? Just looking at the current website should send up a red flag that they don’t take the necessary steps to stop this kind of thing from happening. Hopefully this changes with the beta version, but in alpha, buyers cannot look through categories or search for specific items. There are just two rows of relatively unrelated products displayed for viewing. It can be expected that this will change as the app and website grow.

To give ClearanceKart the benefit of the doubt, they just launched their alpha site and are working on the beta version, so there should be many enhancements to come. Even so, the mere emergence of ClearanceKart gives people the idea to buy something they see in a store that has been discounted significantly and then sell it for more. The best way to do that is online, so who wouldn’t do so on Amazon or eBay in order to take advantage of an obscene amount of exposure?