**US READERS: This is a UK only competition, but you can join Zulily in the US and receive all the same benefits. If you don’t already use Zulily, read on to find out more! (I also think this is a great way to buy gifts for friends abroad without having to pay international postage!)**

If you’re on my Facebook or Twitter pages, you’ll know that I’m a huge fan of a recently launched website in the UK – Zulily. What is Zulily? Well, it’s the Groupon of parenting, basically.

Every day they have three or four brands that have a selection of items on offer, discounted at up to 70%.  Better than Groupon, and aimed at busy parents who aren’t necessarily online every day, the offers stay ‘live’ for 3 days, meaning on any given day you have at least 9 different brands to choose from. And each brand has a bunch of items on offer.

The awesomeness of it is that in the week and a half I’ve been signed up to Zulily, some of my personal favourite brands have already shown up, like Galt (we bought a 4-in-1 puzzle for Ameli and another for a friend’s birthday and a new hippo chair for her craft table), P’kolini, Wallies (we bought a tree-picture growth chart, which I’ve been looking wanting for ages! And a chalk board reusable sticker for drawing on the playroom’s glass wall.)

In the week coming they have two more brands I’ll be keeping my eyes open for, and at the moment (maybe it’s the novelty!) but when I wake in the morning, one of the first things I do is check my phone to see the see what the days’ offers are! (They send one email a day, at 06:00.)

Now, we all know a deal is only a deal if you were going to buy it anyway, and I don’t want anyone  bankrupting themselves for stuff they didn’t need in the first place, but I think it’s just great that there is this service available, and that you can grab a bargain when you see it, if it’s something you can use. For example, I have two birthday parties for toddlers from my natural parenting group coming up in the next few weeks: thank you for the special offer on Galt toys.  A little bit of foresight and self-control and it’s a winner!

I was having a chat about Zulily with a Twitter friend who said what turned her off about it was the £6.95 postage. I agree – that would put me off too. I’m not sure why, but if you ‘check out with Paypal’ that’s your postage fee. If you check out normally, however, and then pay by card or Paypal, it’s only £3.95 – comparative to most supermarkets.

So, you may have noticed by now, but you can’t actually see what Zulily have on offer unless you sign up – it’s an email a day, and if you don’t like it you can always unsubscribe.

You get £10 for every friend you refer who actually buys something – I received my first referral credit on Friday, after a friend bought the same growth chart as I did!

While products are great, I do hope Zulily will branch out to experience days and even better, family friendly hotels! (It’s my biggest gripe with Groupon: their hotel and breakaway offers are only ever for two people!) But I’ll be hanging around in the meantime anyway!

After placing an order, I had immediate confirmation, and after a friend purchased something, I received my referral credit straight away. I’ll have to come back and let you know how long the order took, but so far, I’m totally in love with Zulily!

Competition

Zulily have offered a Diary of a First Child reader the opportunity to win £25 credit to spend in store. Your £3.95 postage fee will come off that, so you’re still walking away with £21, which if done wisely can buy you plenty good stuff – I paid £44 for my whole basket of five items last week!

To stand a chance to win, visit Zulily, see the current list of brands, then come back here and let me know what your favourite brand on Zulily UK is? (Hint: Click on See What You May Find in the bottom right corner).

For an additional entry SIGN UP to receive the daily Zulily email and have access to the special offers.  Leave a second comment here to say you have! (I will check to confirm that the winner has signed up if it’s one of those comments that win!)

This competition finishes at 23:59 on 14 May and the winner will be randomly drawn. Winners will be announced here and on the Diary of a First Child Facebook Page. Please check these to find out who won.

AND THE WINNER IS: 

Please read the competition rules.

You do not have to tweet or share this competition to enter, and doing so does not give you additional entries unless otherwise stated, but doing so helps ensure that I can keep bringing you competitions! You can subscribe to Diary of a First Child by RSS  or to our competitions only RSS feed or email. You can also follow us on Facebook or on Twitter. We hope to see you back again soon!