Michelle Dewberry came to the public's attention in 2006 when she won The Apprentice, now she is about to launch a website aimed at saving women money.
Chiconomise.com launched in January 2009 as a newsletter and has, Michelle tells us, "tens of thousands of subscribers." Michelle is financing the project herself and has been really lucky in recruiting her team. "Because of The Apprentice," she says, "People have basically come to us so it has been really straight-forward recruiting people." The main idea of the website is to provide a female audience with money-saving advice. "I like shopping but there are so many discount vouchers and so many websites asking you to sign up - I don't have the time! So I thought wouldn't it be good if there was one central place to get this from?"
Hull-born Michelle has faced many challenges in getting the project off the ground. "We have been impacted by the recession. For example, we had a fantastic office in Covent Garden but arrived one day to find we couldn't get in! The owner of the building had gone bust and we all lost our offices." The first phase of Chiconomise.com will be about aggregating discount information across a range of goods and services, spanning fashion, beauty, travel and food. The website makes its money from advertising ("but we are not launching with any advertising") and affiliations but Michelle is adamant to point out that "about 30-40% of deals we feature will be affiliates, but we will feature the best, regardless of whether they are our affiliates."
After winning The Apprentice, Michelle worked for Sir Alan Sugar for 11 months before returning to her own business consultancy. She wrote her autobiography, Anything Is Possible, before heading to New York to consult. "Then I had the idea for Chiconomise, and came back to the UK."
In stage two of the wesbite, Michelle is looking to develop iPhone applications and integrate with Facebook. "The next phase is all about the community," she explains. In the meantime, "we really want to hear from people and will be really driven by our customers so we are encouraging them to talk to us, so drop us a line, or give us a call!"
Email this page to a friend
