In order to obtain coupons most people have to search for it on the Internet or in a newspaper, cutting them out and then having five or more coupons stuff in your wallet. Don’t forget trying to use the coupon before it expires.
With the Isle Discount (iDcard) that is all in the past. The iDcard is the size of a credit card and gets you discount at certain businesses.
Some discounts that are being offered in Oahu are at Teddy’s, where you receive 15 percent off your purchase Monday-Friday and 10 percent off your purchase Saturday and Sunday. At Menchie’s Frozen Yogurt and Islands Restaurant in Ala Moana, you receive 20 percent off your purchases any day of the week.
“At first I did not think much about it,” said Richard Dorin, a local business owner in Hawaii, after he was given the iDcard. “However, when I went to one of my favorite restaurants and received 20 percent off the check, I was pleasantly surprised.”
Now he checks the iDcard app to see where the iDcard is accepted whenever he goes out.
Shawn Dohmen, the CEO of Isle Discount, said that he started the iDcard because he did not like paying full price. He saw what online group coupons companies were doing and thought that it was not helping local businesses.
“More less they were in it for themselves and taking a huge percentage of the companies sales,” Dohmen said.
Instead, he found a way to provide free advertising for local businesses. He also helped produce something that will lead to brand loyalty. In other words, people may use the iDcard many times without worrying about it expiring.
Currently the iDcard is accepted inter-island and in Tokyo. It will also soon be accepted in Canada.
The iDcard has a free app that one can download on to their iPhone, Android and Blackberry, which has a list of stores that accept the iDcard. It describes the type of discount that the store is offering and provides turn-by-turn direction to each sponsor location or there is a button to click that says “discount near you.” The app also has four different language choices, which are Japanese, Korean, Chinese and English.
To sign up for an iDcard people can go to the website. The iDcard is $30, which lasts until the end of the calendar year. The person will receive it the following business day. There is also an iDcard for tourists, who get 30-day iDcard for $15 and it begins the day you purchase it. The 30-day iDcard gets delivered within 90 minutes or less to the hotel rooms in Waikiki. Lastly, there is the $20 iDcard for fundraisers.
One can sign up for free e-mails or review the website to see the weekly updates. Every Friday people get a new announcement of the changes that have been made. There are contests where people can win free coupons and iDcards. Dohmen mentioned that it is a fun way to give back to the people who are registered and have been supporting him.
“You will never see a Groupon or a Living Social sticker on someone’s car but you will see an iDcard sticker on people’s cars,” Dohmen said. “They actually love it (the iDcard).”