Shoeboxed has been going extremely well as of late, with many new people signing up and enjoying our mail-in service. We’re happy to see so many people take advantage of this thing we’ve put together. All you new members: you can expect a little something extra in the mail from yours truly this week. Just because.

Anyway, although we spend basically our entire lives chugging away at our computers trying to make Shoeboxed into the success we know it will be, we also like to take a step back every once in a while. Recently, we evaluated our marketing and messaging so that we could come up with a new tag line. We had used some sort of random ones in the past, but now I think we’re going to stick with this one for a while.

So without further build up, our new tag line is:

Shoeboxed: Where Receipts Go.

Simple right? Well, we think it captures pretty well what we do here. Your receipts come to us (through several channels), so (by corollary) this is also where they come. And we thought we would point that out.

Anyway, you’ll probably start seeing it around more, so that’s what that is.

Some of us headed up to New York last weekend to show the big city what we’re made of. We pulled onto the Island around 4 am Friday morning sporting our new SUPER RECEIPT SAVER shirts.

Our debut on Wall Street five hours later drew a large crowd. And we met many interesting people. We even found a business analyst who claimed to have every single receipt he’d acquired over the past thirty years - mind you he looked like he couldn’t be older than 32.

When a street preformer got a little crazy and the police began dispersing the crowd, we decided to visit other parts of the Island.

Everywhere we went people stopped us to find out what we were all about. We spread the Shoeboxed love all over the lower east side. For a while, we even staked a claim over NYC’s own Shoebox at Astor Place.

It was a great time. But after three days the lack of sleep had started to get to us! We were happy to head home. If you got a chance to see us, be sure to leave us a comment!

So, can you guess which ride was ours?

Julia spent a good deal of time today and yesterday organizing our in-house file server. It was really unorganized, but we kind of knew where anything was at any given time. As our team grows though, and we take on summer interns, we felt like it would be a good idea to actually organize it in a meaningful way. I mean, we are a receipt organization company, so this kind of stuff is our hobby. Anyway, we found some great pieces of Shoeboxed history, including old blog designs and an ancient flyer that had a Mexican jumping bean on it for some reason. Anyway, one thing that public never saw was a flash video that was made about Shoeboxed this summer.

Before we launched our public beta in July, our Austrian friend, Flo, made us a flash video attempting to explain how Shoeboxed organizes your finances. Despite the fact that there’s no real explanation of what Shoeboxed does, and that he uses commas instead of decimal points (so Euro, Flo), this video is pretty much perfect.

Just click to view. It should open in your Internet browser.

Enjoy! If anyone wants to volunteer to top this flash video, let me know! We’d love to see it. We might even give you a job if it’s really good!

A lawyer at one of the larger firms around here sent us a pretty funny email the other day that was definitely worth sharing. It’s about his experience at our local airport, RDU.

I just hit the men’s room at RDU before hopping on my flight tonight. Each urinal had a shoeboxed.com business card on top of it.

Don’t really have anything else to add, except that the guy at the urinal next to me took the card off his urinal. I didn’t stick around to see if you guys have someone nearby that runs in an replaces the cards. : )

Hope all’s well.

First of all, this is absolutely hysterical and a testament to our off-the-wall marketing team. Secondly, we may or may not have been passing out flyers at the airport. It is possible that there are some Shoeboxed fans roaming the terminal bathrooms at RDU leaving flyers in unsuspecting places. Who knows where they came from :).

With regard to the runners who come in and replace the cards: that’s one of the funniest mental images I’ve had in a while, so props to our lawyer friend who literally made me laugh out loud.

I wonder if the guy who picked the card up at the urinal ended up signing up. If you’re the guy and you can somehow prove it, we want to hear from you!

It’s tough being the Shoeboxed chauffeurs. Executive orders this morning left some important details out, nonetheless we pulled out the sign: “Shoeboxed.com for Bill Gates” and got to work. We patiently waited by the baggage claim.

For some reason, people were shocked that Bill was coming. People quickly found their movie cameras and filmed away. Others pointed, laughed, and some even pretended not to care, although their eyes were glued to the sign. Head of RDU security stopped us. “You should go check the millionaire’s baggage claim back there!”

Despite the attention we drew, we couldn’t find him in Terminal A or the Millionaire’s baggage cliam. We even checked the restrooms, phone booths, and by the soda machines. So we headed to Terminal C.

In Terminal C, we set up shop at the foot of the escalators by the baggage claim. As people rode down the escalator, jaws dropped, minds were boggled, conversations were dropped. Still, no Bill.

Maybe he’ll make it tomorrow.

Even though we didn’t find him, we definitely got some interesting looks, and people made some pretty memorable comments.

The funniest statements:

“Oh my lord… Bill Gates is coming to town? I’ve been filming a YouTube documentary on my trip. Mind if I include this? Also, remind him to support the baby boomer generation of women, when he comes.”

“Daddy, what’s Shoeboxed.com?”

“You must’ve missed the executive airport!”
“No, Bill is a man of the people”-Etienne

“Which flight was he on? I didn’t see him” - Random Traveler
“Really? He was wearing a Shoeboxed.com T-Shirt!” - Etienne

The looks we got were priceless.

About a week ago, I got an email announcing that MTV’s The Real World would be casting in Durham today. After reading Dave Eggers’ A Heartbreak Work of Staggering Genius, in which he tells a tremendously entertaining account of his attempt to get on The Real World, I had always secretly wanted to try out.

I by no means fall into a specific stereotype that would be of any interest to MTV for this kind of show, but the casting was taking place literally across the street, so I decided to meander on over there and check it out.

Alex Klein, a Shoeboxed product development master, came with me to survey the scene and take some pictures. The process was kind of strange, but definitely worth it since it finally gave me the inside info on how Real World auditions work. I had to fill out a pretty generic form that asked questions like “What is your most embarassing moment?” and “What are you most passionate about?” but I managed to write Shoeboxed on it a few times, so hopefully it was worth it for marketing purposes at least. I hope some MTV intern looks at my application a month from now and then goes to Shoeboxed. That would definitely make my day.

Anyway, after filling out my application, I had a group interview with 9 other contestants and 2 casting directors. It was all very weird: they asked us about the upcoming presidential election and then encouraged us to tell us what we thought about cheating in a relationship. I was confused.

Needless to say, I’m not expecting a call back, but I’d be happy to be on the show! Hey MTV, want to come to the Shoeboxed office? We’d make a great story for ya!

So today is Cyber Monday, according to Shop.org. This is the biggest day of the year for online shopping. And as a platform that exists to help you in organizing your online and offline receipts, we’re obviously excited.

Well, actually, as much as we like online shopping, we are not necessarily fond of every holiday neologism that is being made up by the industry. I’m thinking back to an old episode of The Simpsons, where they create a new holiday called Love Day just to drive up sales of terrible merchandise.

The term “Cyber-Monday” was coined in 2005, when ComScore reported that online spending increased by 26% on the first Monday after Thanksgiving, compared to the year before.

There may be a lot of reasons for this (one for sure is that online spending is simply increasing by two-digit percent numbers every year, no matter what day it is) but the whole reason it was given such a moniker makes it seem like just another marketing stunt.

With things like Valentine’s or Mother’s day, which are also heavily pushed by businesses, we at least have something (or someone) to care for on these days. Yes Valentine’s Day is commercial but we’re willing to accept it because it’s also about love and family affection. Cyber Monday is different. It seems like it’s a cold, impersonal online shopping day. And there aren’t any holiday decorations.

Nevertheless, we love deals. And a lot of stores use this new holiday to bring you some of those. So, while keeping the criticism about useless marketing buzzwords up, we will happily enjoy getting a good bargain.

If you’re like us, you can get the best overview of what stores offer what kind of discount, here .

We hope you get a good deal and wish you a good week!

Elevators are an interesting thing. When you live on a building that’s more than a few stories high, you pretty much have to use them any time you want to do anything. Everyone else who lives in your building has to use them, too. For the most part, you have no idea who these other people in your building are, but the elevator forces you to interact in the most awkward of ways.

When you first hit the call button for the elevator and someone else walks up, there is always the uncomfortable half-smile and nod. There’s really nothing to say; the most you can hope for in terms of meaningful dialogue is something along the lines of:

“Hey, how are you doing?”
“Good, just waiting for the elevator.”
“Oh cool, me too.”
Awkward silence.

The awkwardness intensifies when you actually get in the elevator. Now you are in a confined space with someone you have nothing to talk about with, and the seconds stretch out into mini-eternities. I have a theory that time slows down in elevators in some kind of cosmic joke just to make my life more uncomfortable.

Even better, German elevators in particular happen to have been designed by the same people who brought you sardine cans and matchboxes. Seriously, cramming six strangers into a broom closet and riding to the 19th floor is one of the most tense situations you can imagine. And yet, for all this, you still smile and say goodbye when another person steps out. It’s the same tone you use when you have just shared a moment, but in this case all you shared was standing too close to one another and trying to avoid eye contact. It truly is bizarre.

Yes I did dress up in a huge box to spread the news and to create some hype. I mean, it seemed like a funny idea at the time. We need people to be as excited as we are about shoeboxed. However, I don’t really think our crazy American humor translated too well into German. All I can say is this — we may or may not be allowed back into a certain German university for a very long time…

But honestly, they’ll find out sooner or later about shoeboxed, and what better way to discover the online revolution than with a misplaced American girl in a beat up brown box yelling incoherent German phrases? Can you think of anything? Neither can I.

What’s even crazier is that I believe in this idea so much that I am willing to sacrifice my feet to canvas Berlin. I have probably covered most of Berlin on foot and consequently covered my feet with blisters. As I write this with both of my legs elevated waiting on several different trays of ice in the freezer, I am struggling to put my new knee brace on. Honestly, it sounds worse than it really is, but I have had a bad knee for years and its really annoying at crucial times. After a long day in Berlin, I stopped by a large department store to pick up this brace, and although it took three shopping attendants to figure out what the heck I was talking about, I had the brace in hand and went to the cashier. Luck would have it that I didn’t have enough cash (and people here are very pushy at the check out line) so I handed her my credit card, which I am pretty sure is maxed out by now… It’s nice to know I won’t have to worry about that kind of thing once shoeboxed is around.

It’s a big day at shoeboxed.com. For once in our lives, we feel loved.

The team has been really impressed with the response we’ve been receiving from within the on and off-line communities. It’s not only great that so many people are traveling and returning to the site, but many are going out of the their way to find out more about shoeboxed.com. Some approach the situation rationally–choosing to write a polite email requesting to know more about our team, plan, and vision. Others, however, show clear signs of frustration. We have received several messages that have transgressed the boundaries of decency in a manner that shouldn’t be repeated in front of women or children– using foul language, making sweeping generalizations, and threatening the lives of the co-founders’ and their families. Okay, that last part totally didn’t happen, but I think it raises a good point. It’s hard to get excited about something that you know so little about.

And we know this. We know we’re being vague. We know at this point in time you may not be totally convinced that you should commit your life to the shoeboxed revolution. We know we’re asking you to put faith in something that you don’t fully understand. It’s hard to pay $8.50 for a movie when you don’t already know who’s in it. It’s not always easy to hop on the party bus when you don’t know what drinks they’re serving. It’s hard to sit on Santa’s lap when you don’t know if there’s a homeless alcoholic hiding under that long white beard.

But you do it anyway. Why? Because you tell yourself to have faith. To have faith in the people, the place, the system. Shoeboxed.com is no different. And seriously, take a second to see it from our perspective. We have a great idea. And then we have lawyers. As much as we hate them, we pay them a lot. And apparently, we would be violating some dealio if we told you something about our whatchamacallit. We’re not oblivious. We know how you feel. We may be optimistic in thinking that people could be as excited as we are, but we’re certainly not stupid. Just know that we want to tell you more about shoeboxed.com–and as soon as we can, we will.

So listen. Next time you go to a restaurant, order before you get a menu. Divorce your wife before you’ve got the next one lined up. And for gosh sakes, don’t be afraid to let yourself get excited about shoeboxed.com without knowing all the details! The party bus is leavin’ the station, now jump on.