Recent college graduate George Bousis and his partner Brad Wasz took advantage of a daily deals industry at the peak of its consumption when they created CouponTrade.com.
They offer coupon collectors -- including Groupon and other daily deals -- and gift card recipients a place to sell those deals they had purchased but decided not to use.
“I bought a spa package for my girlfriend at the time and later realized that it was for a spa in Aurora. She lives in the city and doesn’t drive much so I knew she wasn’t going to use it,” Bousis said. Bousis' brother recently sold a $1,100 store credit to Louis Vuitton -- after just three days on the site, he said.
The emerging “daily deal” industry brings in around $4 to $5 billion a year annually and yet 30% of the deals go unused. Unused gift cards account for $20 million in lost cash each day. Bousis and Wasz created an online marketplace for frugally minded consumers to buy and sell gift cards and daily deals.
“We don’t cater to Groupon,” Bousis said. But without a doubt, CouponTrade has benefitted from the massive amounts of publicity that Chicago based deal site, and its clones, have received lately.
With each new site CouponTrade’s consumer base grows, because they offer a solution to that awful moment of realization that they’ve just bought something they will never use.
“It seems like there’s a new one every day and the more daily deal places there are, the better it is for us,” Bousis explained.
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For CouponTrade one thing is certain, “it’s all about timing,” according to Bousis.
Given the recent rise of the daily deal, it looks like CouponTrade has had perfect timing.
