Best Business Deals
A bootstrapper's guide to saving money on office furniture, phone service, computers, business travel, and more.
Michael Byers
For self-funded entrepreneurs, there are few skills more crucial than the ability to do more with less. That could be why many business owners take pride in hunting down deals and driving hard bargains. In that spirit, we have compiled tips to help you save big on a variety of office necessities. You might even earn bragging rights.
Jump down to one the following sections:
Your morning caffeine fix | Computers | Chairs, desks, and cubicles | Office art | Business cards | Cheap (even free) calls | Creating a website | Throwing a party | Munchies for the break room | A free perk for employees | Help with computer problems | Team-building activities | A cleaning crew | Software | Payroll-processing services | Smart employees who work for cheap | A posh place to work | Custom company logos | Cheap flights and makıng the most of your miles | Hotel rooms
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Your morning caffeine fix
Because of poor harvests and growing demand, coffee is at its highest price in 14 years. But you can find bargains online for brands such as Starbucks and Seattle's Best Coffee at DiscountCoffee.com. A box with enough Starbucks coffee to brew 18 pots was recently selling for $36, compared with $43 on Starbucks.com. DiscountCoffee.com offers free shipping on orders over $50, and there's no sales tax outside of Missouri. Plus, if you find a lower price online after you order, the company will refund 110 percent of the difference. For discounts on coffee machines, head to restaurant supply stores. Sites such as KaTom and the Webstaurant Store offer wholesale prices on a large selection of coffeemakers, from big commercial brewers to single-cup machines. Machines from brands such as Bunn and Cecilware typically cost about $100 less than they do at other outlets.
Computers
Before you buy a new computer, check out sites such as TechBargains and BradsDeals, which list recent coupon codes from manufacturers and retailers. For instance, TechBargains recently published a code for 25 percent off a new Dell Inspiron 570 desktop. Of course, if you are in the market for new computers, chances are you have some old ones to get rid of. Gazelle.com buys used electronics, for an average of $130 for used PC desktops and $450 for Macs. Other sites, such as SmallDog.com and Tekserve.com, buy and sell used computers. If you are looking for deals, steer clear of the Apple Store, says Brad Wilson, editor in chief of BradsDeals. "Amazon, MacMall, and Mac Connection routinely beat Apple's prices and sales tax," he says.
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Chairs, desks, and cubicles
If you want new furniture, there is a wide selection of discounted desk chairs and other items on Overstock.com. The site charges just $3 for shipping for every order in the continental U.S. If used furniture will do, Craigslist is a great place to snatch up cheap items from local companies that have gone out of business. You can also find discount office furniture at Cort, a furniture rental company. It has a large inventory of clearance furniture—shelves, file cabinets, and desks for 40 percent to 70 percent off—that the federal government rented when it was conducting the 2010 census.
"We bought $30,000 worth of cubicles for $500 from an ad on Craigslist. Later, we realized that we had more than twice as many workstations as we needed. We put an ad on Craigslist and sold the excess for $500."
—Alex Edelstein, CEO of Servio, San Francisco
Art on a Budget On 20x200.com, prints from contemporary artists sell for $20 and up. Here are a few: (from left) Praia Piquinia 02/08/07 15h16, by Christian Chaize; Patsy Cline and Hank Williams, by Mark Ulriksen; Nice Pants, by Landon Nordeman; and Going Under, by Jorge Colombo.
Office art
Many online services help you spruce up bare office walls inexpensively. 20x200.com offers low-cost prints of limited-edition artwork and photography. Prices vary by size. Any 8- by 10-inch print costs just $20. Pictopia.com charges similar prices for prints from its selection of 500,000 archival photographs from the New York Public Library, The Washington Post, National Geographic, and other sources. You can also rent art. For $10 a month, TurningArt.com will send you a different framed print of your choice every three months. You add prints to your queue, like you add movies on Netflix. For every dollar you spend on the service, you earn credits toward the purchase of an original work. (Prices range from $500 to $5,000.)
Business cards
At Vistaprint, an order of 250 color business cards costs less than $26, including shipping, and the site frequently runs promotions that can save you an additional 50 percent to 80 percent. One recent offer included 500 one-sided, standard-stock business cards for $10, including shipping. (Vistaprint charges extra for double-sided printing and nicer paper stock.) Just be sure to order your cards well in advance: The cheapest shipping option is 21 days.
A. Armstrong Roberts/Corbis
Cheap (even free) calls
If you have an Internet connection and a headset, you can make low-priced calls using your computer. It's free to call numbers in the U.S. using Google Voice and about 2 cents a minute with Skype. Both services have low rates for international calls. (China is 2 cents a minute with either.) If you want a professional phone system, you can save thousands a year with a virtual service, such as Grasshopper or RingCentral. These online systems let you set up phone extensions, an employee directory, and an automated receptionist for your company. Instead of paying to wire every phone in your office, you can route calls to existing lines, such as cell phones. At Grasshopper, plans range from $10 to $199 a month, based on the company's total talk time. RingCentral charges a monthly fee of $20 to $50 per user.
Creating a website
Many companies—including iPage and HostGator—will host your website for less than $5 a month, but not all of them make it simple to design a basic site. Weebly does. The site offers professionally designed templates that you can customize with a simple drag-and-drop interface. Plus, Weebly will host a basic site for free. When it comes to buying your Web address, it's cheaper to go elsewhere, however. You can buy a domain name for less than $10 a year at Namecheap, Name.com, and 1&1.
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Throwing a party
Whether you are hosting a launch party or an office shindig, you can get discounts by booking venues on slow nights. That's how Her Campus, a Cambridge, Massachusetts—based publisher of an online magazine for college students, scored free space and appetizers for its anniversary party last September. Co-founder Windsor Hanger approached a local bar that was hosting a 10 p.m. concert in the middle of the week. "I said, 'If we pack the place between 8 and 10 p.m., chances are those people will stick around for the show,' " Hanger says. You can also cut costs by getting sponsors to donate alcohol, door prizes, and other items. At another Her Campus event last year, Jack Wills, a British clothing maker, picked up the cost of the venue, DJ, and open bar in exchange for equal billing at the event.
Lars Klove/Getty
Munchies for the break room
You may not think of Amazon as your go-to destination for office snacks, but the site has a large selection of cheap bulk items such as Nature Valley Granola Bars ($27 for 72 bars) and SunChips ($15 for a box of 30 small bags). Many items qualify for free shipping. Another cheap option for office snacks is the discount club Costco, which has a delivery service for businesses. The online selection is much smaller than Amazon's, but shipping is free for many items. Costco membership is $50 or $100 a year (the latter includes 2 percent cash back on all purchases). Nonmembers can use the online service, too, but there's a 5 percent surcharge.
