Businesses in Our Neighborhood

Fishing for Deals

		What started as a hobby for Kristina McLean six years ago became a thriving Internet business and place to "find deals, friends, and more." .

The old and the new can live side by side: if not in real world, than in the real world and virtual world. Behind the walls of an old house in Old North Knoxville you will find an Internet business devoted to helping find the best deals on health, cooking, and crafts just to name a few. 

Where is this place you may ask? It's as close your computer keyboard and it will take you as far as you want to go. The name of the company is FFD Enterprises. The web site address is www.fishingfordeals.com. If you need to call, you can dial 865-633-8562.

Open 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, FFD started out as a hobby for Kristina McLean. When the Internet boom first started, many on-line stores offered gifts and money off coupons. Shopping forums were created to share these deals. "I discovered these forums in the winter of 1998," Kristina said. "When the forum I participated in shut down in the spring of 1999, I started my own forum. The name of my site, fishingfordeals.com was chosen as a play on my AOL screen name at the time, gofishgrl. Fishing For Deals has grown into one of the largest and most comprehensive shopping forums on the web. As FFD has grown, we've added other forums for health, support, cooking, crafts and other topics. The success of the forums is due to the active participation of our members. Many of them have been members since I first started the board."

FFD has 7400 members, an average of over 1,600,000 pages viewed a month, over 13 million hits a month, and almost 1500 new posts daily. Not only are lists of companies with different deals, but there is also a forum in which shoppers can exchange information. There is also a Fishing For Deals e-mail list you can join. 

FFD has grown to the point that Kristina has three full time employees, including herself and her boyfriend Marcus Phelps, and three part time employees. "If you had asked me back in high school, I never would have guessed that I'd be a professional nerd," Kristina said. "What started out as a hobby has grown beyond what I ever could have guessed when I first started my site. I feel very blessed because my business has allowed Marcus and me to buy and start renovations on our (historic) house" in Old North Knoxville.

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