For more than a decade, Australians knew Click Frenzy primarily as an event.

A date arrived, retailers promoted discounts, consumers descended on websites and, after the frenzy subsided, everybody returned to normal.

The latest incarnation of Click Frenzy appears to have a considerably larger ambition.

Under new ownership following the collapse of the previous business, Click Frenzy is being rebuilt by Catch founders Gabby and Hezi Leibovich. The important question is therefore not simply whether Australians will participate in another Click Frenzy sale.

It is whether Click Frenzy can change what it is.

The opportunity is to transform an occasional sales event into a permanent shopping-discovery platform — somewhere Australians visit before deciding where to buy.

If that works, the new Click Frenzy could ultimately become more valuable than the business Australians previously knew.

Buying a brand rather than starting one

The Leibovich brothers have an advantage that would be extraordinarily expensive for a conventional start-up to reproduce.

Australians already know the name.

Click Frenzy has operated since 2012 and, before its collapse, had accumulated a substantial consumer database and relationships with thousands of retailers.

Not all of those consumers will return. Email databases deteriorate, shopping habits change and the Australian ecommerce market of 2026 is very different from that of a decade ago.

But recognition matters.

A completely new shopping platform would need to spend heavily merely explaining to Australians what it was.

Click Frenzy does not.

Millions of Australians have already encountered the brand.

That substantially changes the economics of rebuilding it.

Experienced owners

The identity of the buyers also matters.

Gabby and Hezi Leibovich built Catch of the Day, which developed into Catch Group and was eventually acquired by Wesfarmers in 2019 for $230 million.

They therefore understand something particularly important about internet retailing: attracting people who are already prepared to buy.

That distinction is fundamental.

Internet traffic itself is not necessarily valuable.

Purchase intent is.

Someone casually reading an article about televisions may or may not purchase one. Someone searching a deal platform for a discounted 75-inch television is considerably further along the purchasing journey.

That consumer is commercially valuable to retailers.

And that is where the new Click Frenzy proposition becomes interesting.

Click Frenzy doesn't need to sell the television

Traditional retailers carry enormous operational burdens.

They buy inventory.

They finance it.

They warehouse it.

They advertise it.

They process payments.

They ship products.

They manage returns.

And occasionally they discover that they have purchased far more inventory than consumers want.

Click Frenzy can potentially operate very differently.

Its job is increasingly to identify the product, display the offer and send the customer to the retailer.

The retailer completes the transaction.

If the consumer subsequently purchases something, Click Frenzy can receive an affiliate commission or generate revenue through its commercial arrangements with retailers.

That means Click Frenzy does not necessarily need to become another Amazon, Catch or department store.

The product Click Frenzy is really selling is qualified shopping traffic.

That can be an attractive business.

From an event to a habit

The greatest strategic change, however, is frequency.

Click Frenzy's expanded calendar now encompasses numerous shopping occasions rather than relying principally upon one giant event.

Travel, Father's Day, football finals, school holidays, the main Click Frenzy event, Singles Day, Black Friday, Cyber Monday, Christmas, Boxing Day and back-to-school provide repeated reasons for consumers to return.

There is a commercial logic behind this.

The traditional Click Frenzy relationship looked something like this:

Click Frenzy event begins → consumer visits → consumer buys → event ends.

The new model potentially becomes:

Consumer wants something → checks Click Frenzy → compares deals → visits retailer → buys.

That is a completely different business.

The first is an event.

The second is a habit.

And habitual consumer behaviour is considerably more valuable.

But there is a problem

Click Frenzy no longer has the sales-event landscape largely to itself.

Black Friday has become enormous in Australia.

Cyber Monday is established.

Amazon conducts its own major promotional events.

Individual retailers continually run sales.

Consumers receive offers through email, apps, loyalty programs and social media.

Google can compare products within seconds.

International platforms including Amazon and Temu have accustomed Australians to enormous searchable catalogues.

Click Frenzy therefore cannot build its future simply around the proposition that things are cheap.

The internet is already overflowing with things claiming to be cheap.

Its stronger proposition may instead be:

Is this actually a good deal?

That is much more useful.

The importance of verifying the bargain

One of the interesting elements of the relaunched Click Frenzy is its emphasis on monitoring deals and prices.

The platform says it automatically checks retailer websites, identifies expired or out-of-stock offers and assesses discounts against observed pricing information.

That may sound like a technical feature.

Strategically, it could become central to the entire business.

Consumers have become increasingly sceptical about recommended retail prices and dramatic percentage-off claims.

A product advertised as "$500 off" tells the shopper relatively little if it was routinely selling at the discounted price several weeks earlier.

What consumers actually want to know is:

Is $899 genuinely a good price for this product?

A platform capable of answering that question reliably provides something more valuable than advertising.

It provides information.

And information can create trust.

Retailers have a reason to participate

The model can also work for retailers because Click Frenzy does not necessarily need to take ownership of their customers.

A participating retailer can receive a shopper who is already looking for a particular product or category.

That retailer retains the transaction, fulfilment and potentially the ongoing customer relationship.

This creates the possibility of a powerful commercial cycle:

More retailers create more deals.

More deals attract more consumers.

More consumers create more valuable traffic.

More valuable traffic attracts more retailers.

Marketplace businesses become particularly powerful when that cycle begins reinforcing itself.

The opposite, however, is equally possible.

If consumers repeatedly discover that Click Frenzy offers nothing they cannot easily find elsewhere, they stop checking.

Traffic falls.

Retailers see less value.

Offers diminish.

Consumers have even less reason to return.

That is why execution will matter far more than brand recognition alone.

Then comes artificial intelligence

There is another reason the timing of the Click Frenzy relaunch is interesting.

Internet shopping itself is beginning another transformation.

For the past 25 years, humans have largely searched for products themselves.

Increasingly, artificial intelligence will do some of that work for them.

Imagine telling an AI assistant:

"Find me the best 65-inch television under $1,500 from a reputable Australian retailer and include delivery to Brisbane."

The AI does not particularly care which retailer has the largest advertising campaign.

It needs data.

Price.

Availability.

Specifications.

Delivery.

Retailer reputation.

Price history.

Discount information.

A shopping platform capable of organising those elements could therefore eventually become useful not only to people browsing a website but also to the software helping those people make purchasing decisions.

That creates an intriguing possibility.

Click Frenzy may ultimately be building something more valuable than a destination website.

It could become part of the information infrastructure through which Australian products, retailers and prices are discovered.

That remains speculative.

But it demonstrates why rebuilding Click Frenzy as a permanent data-rich shopping platform potentially has greater strategic value than merely reviving its famous sales events.

The Australian opportunity

Australians have also become highly conditioned to wait for discounts.

Cost-of-living pressures reinforce that behaviour.

Consumers compare prices, postpone discretionary purchases and increasingly expect major retailers to offer promotions.

That creates an unusual environment.

Retailers need sales.

Consumers want bargains.

But the proliferation of promotions makes it increasingly difficult for consumers to determine which bargains are genuine.

A trusted intermediary therefore has potential value to both sides.

Click Frenzy already possesses one of the hardest ingredients: awareness.

The challenge for its new owners is turning that awareness into utility.

The real test

The resurrection of Click Frenzy should therefore not be judged simply by how much merchandise Australians purchase during its next major event.

Large sales numbers would certainly help.

But there is a more important measure.

What happens between the events?

Do consumers return?

Do retailers continue supplying offers?

Does the platform develop sufficiently comprehensive price information?

Do shoppers begin using Click Frenzy when they are already thinking about purchasing something?

Most importantly, does the brand become associated not simply with discounts, but with finding out whether a discount is genuinely worthwhile?

If it does, the Leibovich brothers may have acquired considerably more than the remains of a failed ecommerce company.

They may have acquired the foundation of an Australian shopping-discovery platform.

The Business Times View

The old Click Frenzy was something Australians waited for.

The new Click Frenzy needs to become somewhere Australians go.

That distinction will determine its future.

If consumers continue saying, "Click Frenzy is on," the business can again become a successful promotional event.

If they begin saying, "I'll check Click Frenzy before I buy it," something much more significant will have happened.

Click Frenzy will no longer merely be organising sales.

It will have inserted itself between the Australian consumer's decision to buy and the retailer that ultimately receives the money.

In digital commerce, that can be an exceptionally valuable place to be.


Editor's note: Click Frenzy declined to speak to The Times for this story.