StoryofaStartup.com

We were acquired a couple months back   We did a follow up interview here.

Just a quick note, the Future Shop 2009 Boxing Day Flyers, the Best Buy 2009 Boxing Day Flyers and the Dell Boxing Day 2009 flyer have been released into our Boxing Day flyers section!

Boxing Day is in full swing at RedFlagDeals.com!  We’ve started posting the first boxing day flyers!

In other news, we’ve got over 400 coupons now listed on MrsCoupons.com.

Busy, busy, busy!

If you didn’t see the press release that went out about a month ago, we’ve partnered with United Sample to build a Canadian online survey panel.  It’s an interesting project for us, because usually we’re on the other side of the white label with our various PriceCanada.com co-brands.  We’ve worked with United Sample over the past year to offer paid surveys to our readers on an ad hoc basis, but this new panel will allow us to have an ongoing relationship as well as offer our advertisers the opportunity to offer surveys to our panel.  It will be interesting to see how it goes.  There has certainly been an appetite within the community for paid surveys in the past.

Much of what we’ve been working on over the past few months has been making the various sections of our site more modular and platform based.  For example, we’ve redone the credit cards comparison section so that it can operate as a white label solution (we added a credit card payment calculator as well) and we’ve created a self serve coupons platform that local advertisers can use to add coupons to our coupons section.  Unfortunately, since much of this had to be built from the ground up, the changes aren’t always immediately noticeable to users, but they should pay off as they allow us to scale and add further functionality.

The Future Shop Beat the Clock thread on RedFlagDeals.com isn’t a pretty place… basically FS is running a promo where they have a great deal at a specific time that they announce on Twitter.  There are only a few actually in stock at the promo price though and the flood of people they are sending at once is breaking their check out, which means a lot of people are getting their orders canceled.  I’m guessing the marketing folks didn’t give a heads up to the tech folks…  I wouldn’t want to be in their CS department right now.

Well it looks like it’s official: Newegg is coming to Canada!  They’ve updated their Newegg.ca domain to announce it – previously the domain just redirected to Newegg.com.  This isn’t the first time that this has been rumoured.  Two years ago I spoke with their head office about their plans in Canada, but those fizzled when there was an internal reorg and there was never an official announcement as is there is now.  There is lots of discussion about the launch on the RedFlagDeals.com forums.  Our users have high expectations of the launch.

Online retail is a very different game in Canada, so it will be interesting to see how Newegg is able to compete with established sites like FutureShop.ca and NCIX.com.  It will also be interesting to see how closely their prices reflect the prices on their US site.  TigerDirect has both .com and .ca operations, but the prices often vary widely.

The best deal I’ve found through RedFlagDeals.com (in recent memory) is the free Xbox360 that I received from Dell and Bell for signing up for a 1 year subscription to Bell High Speed Internet.  It wasn’t anymore expensive than the Internet service I was paying for from Rogers and I was unhappy with Rogers anyway, so I basically got an Xbox360 for making a switch I probably would have made anyway.  The deal is long over, but here’s a link to the original thread.  That’s my best deal ever!  See you on Live!

Well, technically the nominations are for Most Helpful thread, but Thread of the Year makes a better headline.

The Nominated Threads are:
rn – Hot deal for Rogers Wireless Customers
Red_Army – Anyone need Plumbing help or advice
Jeff-TheBiz – Ask Me Anything About Buying a Mazda at a Dealership
Monsieurmaggot – Auto – WOW —- New cars from US up to 30% cheaper (cost to import under $200)
ainsane – Best Computer Stores in the GTA – Recommended by RFD users
Ebola – FAQ About Cross Border Shopping / CBSA
nepean19 – How to get a free HD PVR from Rogers
Hellfire – I’m a Personal Credit Underwriter – Ask away
phillbert – Tell us a secret you know because of your work that others might not know…
patrob – The OFFICIAL Hardwood Flooring Thread

All of them are great resources and are very deserving of their nominations.  If you have a RedFlagDeals.com account, you can cast your vote here.

Our 2nd Annual RedFlagDeals.com Member Awards have begun!  The nomination period runs until the end of June and the voting takes place between July 1st and 15th.

We’re also beginning preparations for this year’s BBQ.

Busy busy!