An Introduction to Our Web Sites

By Mike Allen, Founder & “Chief Executive Shopper”

As an avid online shopper since the mid-1990s, I quickly learned about the discount power of coupon codes. In fact, my professional involvement with online shopping and coupon codes predates Google. At that time, very few people had broadband Internet access and coupon codes were not easy to find so I created a list of coupon codes and bargains to share with family and friends. That list was the original Shopping-Bargains.com. The word spread about our great savings and, in the years since, led to several other web sites for our growing number of customers.

After more than a decade of involvement in the online marketing space, let me introduce you to our family of bargain shopping sites. Please consider this your guided tour of our sites.

Shopping-Bargains.com – Established February 1999.

Emphasizing online coupon codes, free shipping specials, time-limited deals, and other online promotions, Shopping-Bargains.com contains a searchable and sortable directory of more than 1,500 online stores. Over the years other services have been added and now include a weekly email newsletter, extensive RSS feeds, a blog, and some social media applications. We’ve also won several prestigious industry awards.

Shopping-Bargains.co.uk – Established 2005. Re-launched 2007.

Our second web site was created to meet the demand for voucher codes in the United Kingdom. (A voucher codes is the predominant British term for a coupon code.) We noticed that Shopping-Bargains.com was attracting British customers looking for bargains at British retailers. It made more sense from a usability perspective to create a separate site instead of stuffing US and UK bargains in into the same site so that is what we established. A separate site also allows us to adjust for British English and spelling variations. (See our blog announcement of the UK site.)

ShoppingBargains.ca – Conceptualized 2007. Launched 2009.

Similar to the UK site, our vision for a Canadian shopping site presented a similar challenge. Many US retailers ship to Canada but don’t conduct business in Canadian dollars. That means shoppers have to deal with currency exchange rates and foreign currency transaction fees. We wanted ShoppingBargains.ca to avoid such issues and be truly Canadian, thus we feature authentic Canadian retailers on ShoppingBargains.ca who price and sell their products in Canadian dollars. (See our blog announcement of the Canadian site.)

IndigoAcorn – Launched 2009.

After years of discussion, we finally created a separate entity for high-end designer brands and luxury retailers. Many retailers in the upscale space do not want to be associated with “discount brands” even though they themselves may offer coupon codes and other savings promotions. Therefore, to better cater to a more exclusive lineup of stores, we created our own designer web site and gave it the funky name IndigoAcorn (yes, there really is a story behind the name).

eBoss123 – Launched 2009.

Business shoppers have unique shopping needs and interests. We knew that first-hand after a decade in business ourselves. There are certain vendors and service providers that we depend on and I strongly recommend them to others in business. eBoss123 serves as a somewhat lighthearted way to promote these and other great vendors and business service providers to business owners and managers everywhere. Since it is powered by our technology originally developed for Shopping-Bargains.com, it also allows us to easily promote business coupon codes and savings opportunities as well.

GroceryPrints – Launched mid-2010.

While most of our focus has been with coupon codes and online discounts, we quickly realized there was a lot of interest in saving money on difficult-to-ship items like groceries. For years we have provided links to printable grocery store coupons but felt we could do a better job through a dedicated site focused exclusively on printable coupons. GroceryPrints was developed out of this effort and includes multiple sources of printable grocery store coupons. GroceryPrints also has a blog with posts about other printable coupons for restaurants, service providers, and more.

CardBounty – Launched mid-2010.

As with GroceryPrints, we realized that shoppers looking for great deals often use benefit credit cards to earn cash back, airline miles, hotel points, or some other kind of membership rewards from their purchases. We felt we could help shoppers maximize these benefits and so we created CardBounty to do just that. CardBounty is continually updated with a variety of credit card options that include rewards and other benefits for people with a wide range of credit scores. CardBounty makes it easy to find and compare credit cards based on criteria that is important to you.

Conclusion of Our Guided Tour

While the first project in 1999 was my own, today these sites are managed by our own team of dedicated professionals. I’m still involved on a daily basis but the work is much more than I can even dream of accomplishing.

We are proud of our history and the chance to help individuals, families, and businesses save money shopping online. We thank you for your business and look forward to better serving you in the future.