Business twists Groupon plan

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Updated: August 4, 2011 4:20PM

Gwen Bauer is hitting a sweet spot this holiday season by introducing deal-seeking Chicagoans to locally owned businesses eager to be a part of Internet-shopping and buy-local trends.

Bauer credits daily-deal site Groupon for helping legitimize couponing, but she intends for her South Loop company to grow by offering realistic numbers of discounts that don’t overwhelm retailers or leave shoppers fuming at long waits to redeem the deals.

“We understand modest advertising budgets because we have one ourselves,” said Bauer, who started direct-mail marketing company Open Me four years ago and launched its online sister company, PrintMeCoupon.com, six months ago.

Groupon has been criticized for costing retailers money because of the huge numbers of online shoppers who redeem coupons, and then leaving shoppers to wait months to schedule a service.

Retailers at PrintMeCoupon set up their own deals, figuring in advance how much price-cutting and new customers they can handle, and deal shoppers print the coupons directly from the website.

“We don’t have a huge sales team, so we go into local businesses, introduce ourselves in person and explain that our system is all about what benefits them,” Bauer said.

Bauer’s website and coupon booklet, the latter mailed seven times a year to 20,000 households in each of four neighborhoods — the Gold Coast, River North, West Loop and South Loop — aim to give small businesses a wider variety of marketing outlets without hurting profits or siphoning off customers who are paying full price. The coupons include those for salons, florists, restaurants, dog-sitters, housecleaning services, car repair shops and even a psychic.

“It’s very important for companies to have a variety of forms of advertising to grow their business,” said Bauer, a native of Hobart, Ind., who leveraged her skills as a former art director at a major ad agency to devise her business strategies. “

The coupon booklet charges for ad space just like other print publications, and the online coupon placement costs an extra $20 a month and is open for the retailer to post its own offers.

“Once local businesses log onto the system, 95 percent have updated their coupons on their own. Our goal is to have a big variety and quantity of deals on the website so people can have fun shopping,” Bauer said.

PrintMeCoupon lists about 1,000 coupons each day, with 50 new or updated each week. About 60 percent of the site’s traffic comes from deal-seekers using Google to find specific retailers. Google includes PrintMeCoupon’s deals in its search results.

Bauer credits Groupon for taking the stigma out of couponing, especially with boutiques and high-end retailers. Some of Groupon’s more successful campaigns have been with Gap and movie-ticket seller Fandango.

“Now, high-end retailers don’t shy away as much as in the past from posting coupons,” Bauer said.

The coupon book and website also are benefitting from recession-weary shoppers continuing to search for ways to save money, and a trend toward supporting local businesses. From growing their own food to learning to share and swapping goods through new online services, people are living local, according to a survey by American Express. The survey showed that 54 percent of Americans said they support their local economy and 35 percent said they are more likely to buy local than a year ago. Indeed, the number of coupons redeemed in 2009 soared 27 percent from 2008, to 3.3 million, marking the first year-over-year increase in 17 years, according to coupon-processing agent Inmar. Companies issued twice as many online coupons in 2009 as the year before, and redemptions soared 360 percent.

The technology behind online coupon sites is simple enough for copycats to jump on board, prompting online shoppers to face a dizzying array of sites ranging from Gay List Deals, dubbed Groupon for Gays, to deal aggregator 8Coupon, to sites such as Brad’s Deals, Offers.com, Organic Deals and Mamaloot. Other sites have operated for more than a year, such as DealADayOnline.com, LivingSocial, RetailMeNot and CouponCabin.

Postal Service busy

Since the holidays are big business for printed and online coupons, the U.S. Postal Service stays busy delivering coupon booklets and online order shipments to people’s homes and businesses.

This year, the Postal Service’s Chicago-area trucks are for the first time equipped with location-tracking GPS technology from Glenview-based Navman Wireless, among other contractors.

The number of trucks delivering mail and packages jumps 20 percent during the holiday season to handle the demand.

The Navman Wireless system wires into the trucks’ ignition harness, enabling the Postal Service and its trucking contractors to see where the trucks are in real-time.

Bauer is eagerly awaiting the outcome of the first holiday season for PrintMeCoupon.com, since her coupon booklet receives 25 percent more advertisers during the holidays than during the rest of the year.

“We want to help small businesses grow because they are a huge part of our economy’s success,” she said.