Launched in November, Drop Down Deals Already at Profitability

A new San Diego startup, Drop Down Deals, is launching a website today that is intended to complement the free downloadable Web browser plug-in the company officially unveiled last month.

The company has developed a clever approach to help online shoppers quickly identify and apply valid discount coupons to their purchases. In an interview a few weeks ago, CEO Aaron Mendes told me that many coupon codes available may not be valid on websites like RetailMeNot.com, which attracted some 90 million unique visitors over the past year and is expected to generate $30 million in revenues this year, according to ZD Net.

“The coupons change constantly,” Mendes told me. “On any given day, there may be no coupons available for a specific site. Most coupons don’t last more than a month or so anyway. They expire and get replaced.”

Mendes says Drop Down Deals has solved this problem by developing a free plug-in that remains hidden until a user visits an online shopping site for which coupons or deals are available. Then the application opens a drop-down window on the right-hand side of the screen that shows the coupons and coupon codes available for that retailing site.

“We do it by a domain browser that automatically detects what shopping site you’re on and then shows the coupons for that site,” Mendes said. The company says the service works at more than five thousand retailers, including Wal-Mart, Target, Dell, Kohl’s, Hewlett-Packard, Travelocity, Expedia, Orbitz, Patagonia, and Ralph Lauren—and according to Mendes, “We only display coupons that are valid.”

Mendes says Drop Down Deals also enables users to apply the coupons immediately; it’s not necessary to got to a dedicated coupon site or exit the retailer’s page. “It’s a very simple tool that doesn’t bug users unless they’re shopping,” he said.

With today’s launch of a Drop Down Deals coupon site, consumers will have the choice of browsing through tens of thousands of coupons across

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Author: Bruce V. Bigelow

In Memoriam: Our dear friend Bruce V. Bigelow passed away on June 29, 2018. He was the editor of Xconomy San Diego from 2008 to 2018. Read more about his life and work here. Bruce Bigelow joined Xconomy from the business desk of the San Diego Union-Tribune. He was a member of the team of reporters who were awarded the 2006 Pulitzer Prize in National Reporting for uncovering bribes paid to San Diego Republican Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham in exchange for special legislation earmarks. He also shared a 2006 award for enterprise reporting from the Society of Business Editors and Writers for “In Harm’s Way,” an article about the extraordinary casualty rate among employees working in Iraq for San Diego’s Titan Corp. He has written extensively about the 2002 corporate accounting scandal at software goliath Peregrine Systems. He also was a Gerald Loeb Award finalist and National Headline Award winner for “The Toymaker,” a 14-part chronicle of a San Diego start-up company. He takes special satisfaction, though, that the series was included in the library for nonfiction narrative journalism at the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University. Bigelow graduated from U.C. Berkeley in 1977 with a degree in English Literature and from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism in 1979. Before joining the Union-Tribune in 1990, he worked for the Associated Press in Los Angeles and The Kansas City Times.