Marketing
Incentives
Education
Gaming
Fund Raising
Special Event
About Us
The SpendUs Story
Spendus was founded in the fall of 2003 from an idea spawned by selling vintage board games on EBAY. Many of the games we found at estate sales and garage sales were incomplete, many times not having the full set of money originally distributed with the game. We occasionally found sets that had photocopies of US Bills reduced to the size of the game bills. Then it dawned on us - why not allow individuals to create their own money, as they desire?
We started selling custom game money in the late winter of 2003 by listing auctions on EBAY. The winner of the auction had to email their picture and verbally describe the layout they desired. In 2004 we decided to produce a web site allowing you, the customer, to customize your money in a "wizard" like fashion.
As soon as the web site was up, demand for the concept started pouring in. We leared alot in the three years to follow what features were needed by customers, and who those customers were. Most surprising to us, our intended market of board game owners wanting to replace their board game money with customized money was the smallest market. Large corporations were coming to us to supply their internal incentive programs with play bills. National retail chains were requesting coupons. Things got the craziest when Weird Al Yankovic's agent was calling us to make $1 bills for his next video. We even produced half a million bills for the movie premier of "Funny Money" starring Chevy Chase in Las Vegas. But most importantly people were still having birthday parties with the bills. By 2007, it was becoming clear our customer base had expanded beyond the capabilities of the current site.
We rebranded ourselves three times since the initial web site was rolled out, first as mygamemoney.com, then customplaymoney.com, and now SpendUs.com. The first two names were easy to come up with. We began thinking we were supplying families with customzed play money to replace their own board games with, hence mygamemoney.com. As our market changed, we tried to become more generic in our branding, so we then rolled out customplaymoney.com.
With 5 years experience under us, and a long list of features demanded by our customers to implement, it was time to roll out the biggest incarnation of a customized play money site yet. It had to embrace all of our markets, be much easier to navigate, have more options for your bills, and overall be easier. The technical work was the easy part, but the name slowed us down.
We struggled for three months just to come up with a name. One day one of us said "what if money could talk, what would it say?" I know what my money says - "Spend Us", and a name was born. The name worked with the notion of a common theme between the 6 major markets for play money - each was using the bills to communicate a message. Our tag lag became "Money That Talks". Finally, we needed a mascot for the site, and Spendacus Alotus filled the need. His greek sounding name eminates from the fact some of the earliest money originates from Greece.
We are located in Schenectady, New York, as a home based business.
Mission Statement
SpendUs.com makes it easy, fun, and affordable to create customizable play money for a variety of applications. We strive to be the world leader in providing customized play money for marketing, incentive programs, education, gaming, fund raising and special events. Our "Money That Talks" campaign targets the common theme among these markets - using the power of the dollar to convey a message.