Who Owns Brad's Deals?

Brad Wilson started the site in 2001 as an undergraduate at the University of North Carolina. The origin story is specific: Wilson found that textbook prices at the campus bookstore were far higher than online alternatives, so he built a simple page listing cheaper sources and shared it with classmates. The project spread by word of mouth before he graduated.

Through the 2000s, the site evolved from a student resource into a general deals platform. It added coupon codes, printable in-store coupons and seasonal guides, most prominently its Black Friday coverage, which became a major traffic driver each November. The company incorporated formally and settled in Chicago, building a small team of deal editors who research and verify offers by hand rather than relying purely on automated scraping.

The company's growth model stayed bootstrapped. It earns affiliate commissions when users click through to retailers such as Amazon, Target, Walmart, Nike, Macy's and Home Depot, plus advertising revenue. It has never charged consumers for access. Over time it added a daily email newsletter with millions of subscribers, iOS and Android apps, and an Amazon Alexa skill.

In the mid-2010s, the company reorganized around employee ownership, describing itself as an employee-owned firm of 80-plus staff. Wilson kept the CEO title, with longtime executives running operations. The company survived two industry shakeouts: the daily-deals collapse after Groupon's decline and the coupon-site shakeout as Honey, Capital One Shopping and Rakuten scaled up.

In recent years, Brad's Deals has leaned on editorial differentiation, publishing hand-picked deal roundups, consumer advice and verified coupons, positioning itself against algorithmic aggregators. As of 2026, it remains independent, founder-led and profitable on a small revenue base estimated in the single-digit millions.