‘Krazy’ coupon curators move toward mobile

Krazy Coupon Lady, which runs a website dedicated to helping people save money at grocery stores and online, is moving to new offices in Eagle and expanding its software development team as it prepares to launch an app for mobile devices and look for other ways to improve the coupon-using experience. The company, which was started by two stay-at-home moms during the recession, now has 20 employees.

Co-founder Joanie Demer said the company will release a mobile app this summer that could make it easier for people to find and use coupons for purchases, including adding a shopping list on the app and collecting online coupons.

“It’s going to make couponing much easier and more convenient,” Demer said. Demer said the app will also encourage people to post their own content, such as stories from people about their own coupon purchases, which the site calls “brags.”

Krazy Coupon Lady is developing the app internally, Demer said. The company brought on David Betts, a former Hewlett-Packard IT manager, as chief technology officer last year. Demer said the company is now adding software developers.

“We just reached a critical point where it was imperative that we at least had a CTO,” she said.

Krazy Coupon Lady’s website posts deals many times a day for grocery, drug and online stores, often combining coupons from the stores, manfacturers and other online sources that help people save and occasionally earn money on their purchases. The company makes money through online click ads, as well as affiliate deals through Amazon. That means that if someone clicks on a link to an Amazon purchase and makes a sale, they get a small kickback. The company also makes some deals with other coupon providers, though Demer said those deals don’t affect the website’s content or goal to find good deals.

“We are a consumer advocate,” she said. “Sometimes we get paid for a deal, sometimes we don’t. Our users don’t know the difference.”

Shoppers use coupons to save money. Food companies use them to get people to try their products in the hope of converting them to repeat buyers. Darren Dudley, retail brand manager for the J.R. Simplot Company, said now the company is focusing most of its online marketing around its first consumer retail product in years, a frozen vegetables and grains line called UpSides . The promotion encourages people to visit the company’s website and print off a $1 coupon. The products typically cost $4.

“We’re always looking to drive trial in our products,” Dudley said. “We don’t make the assumption that people will only buy on a promotion.”

Dudley said online coupons are typically cheaper than newspaper or in-store distribution. Before the UpSides launch and working for Simplot, Dudley managed promotions for Bagel Bites, at a time when advertising coupons online wasn’t possible.

“The distributions of coupons has changed significantly in the digital era,” Dudley said.

Demer said that while more coupon shoppers are using online tools to aid in their shopping, the most valuable coupons come from newspapers. She said the company is looking at other potential apps that could improve digital coupons, including ways to help advertisers send coupons to people when they’re actually in a store, to have more influence over purchases.

Demer started the company with Heather Wheeler in late 2008. The women had run other part-time home-based businesses and turned to couponing in an effort to reduce their spending.

“We were two creative women who constantly had schemes to make money out of our house,” she said.

Demer said she was initially skeptical, but after spending a week scouring an Albertsons in Meridian and saving $700, she decided that promoting coupons and savings could be a business.

“By the end of the week, we were Krazy Coupon Ladies and totally obsessed,” she said. The company grew slowly over time. After an appearance on the “Today” show in 2010, Demer said the company started hiring contractors to write content for the site. Eventually, 30 people were writing, but she said running the company was a mess. The company opened its first office and hired a chief operations officer to run day-to-day operations in 2012.

“That was when my life became normal for the first time,” Demer said.

The company is moving from a 3,000-square-foot space near the Hewlett-Packard campus to a 4,500-square-foot former dermatology clinic overlooking the Boise River on Rivershore Lane, near Eagle Road and State Street in Eagle.