Discount Home Shoppers' Club, Inc. (DHS Club) is an American company based in

Englewood, Florida Englewood is a census-designated place (CDP) in Charlotte and Sarasota counties in the U.S. state of Florida. As of the 2020 census, it had a population of 20,800, up from 14,863 at the 2010 census. It is part of the North Port-Bradenton-Sara ...

. It was formed and incorporated in June 1997 by its founder and

CEO A chief executive officer (CEO), also known as a chief executive or managing director, is the top-ranking corporate officer charged with the management of an organization, usually a company or a nonprofit organization. CEOs find roles in variou ...

, Richard Burke. The DHS Club is a multi-business operation that consists of the ClubShop Mall (online shopping), Glocal Income (

affiliate marketing Affiliate marketing is a marketing arrangement in which Affiliate (commerce), affiliates receive a wiktionary:commission, commission for each visit, signup or sale they generate for a merchant. This arrangement allows businesses to Outsourcing, ...

), Glocal Generation (personalized networking), DHS Club Kids (non-profit organization), Ducks Nest Retreat (cabin rentals) and ClubShop Rewards (customer loyalty reward program).

History

The DHS Club was founded in 1997 by Richard Burke, in an apartment over his garage. Soon after, the DHS Club started hiring employees and moved into a small office in

. To establish a membership base, Burke recruited his oldest son Will Burke and his friend Paul Spence to become DHS Club independent sales representatives (VIP Members). The DHS Club incentivised VIP membership by offering residual income opportunities through member referrals, along with discounts on selected products and services. One of the first main products the DHS Club had to offer at a discount was the

Web TV MSN TV (formerly WebTV) was a web access product consisting of a thin client device that used a television for display (instead of using a computer monitor), and the online service that supported it. The original WebTV device design and service ...

. By 2000 the DHS Club had created an online shopping mall for their DHS Club Members that rewarded their members back with cash back rebates. ClubShop Mall online stores included

Best Buy Best Buy Co., Inc. is an American multinational consumer electronics retailer headquartered in Richfield, Minnesota. Originally founded by Richard M. Schulze and James Wheeler in 1966 as an audio specialty store called Sound of Music, it was r ...

Wal-Mart Walmart Inc. (; formerly Wal-Mart Stores, Inc.) is an American multinational retail corporation that operates a chain of hypermarkets (also called supercenters), discount department stores, and grocery stores in the United States and 23 other ...

Amazon Amazon most often refers to: * Amazon River, in South America * Amazon rainforest, a rainforest covering most of the Amazon basin * Amazon (company), an American multinational technology company * Amazons, a tribe of female warriors in Greek myth ...

and

Dell Dell Inc. is an American technology company that develops, sells, repairs, and supports personal computers (PCs), Server (computing), servers, data storage devices, network switches, software, computer peripherals including printers and webcam ...

. By 2001, The DHS Club had over 1 million people join the DHS Club's online shopping mall and affiliate marketing programme. In 2002, The DHS Club launched, ClubBucks Rewards, an offline shopping rewards program with participating merchants, so that members could get discounts and loyalty points. The DHS Club also purchased around of land in Southeast

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and created a corporate retreat property and cabin rental property. In December 2006, the DHS Club and ClubShop Mall were featured on the American television show, ''

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''. By the end of 2007, ClubShop Malls were opened in the

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and

Suriname Suriname, officially the Republic of Suriname, is a country in northern South America, also considered as part of the Caribbean and the West Indies. It is a developing country with a Human Development Index, high level of human development; i ...

From DHS Club to Clubshop

In 2009 all business operations were unified under the Clubshop brand. Outside the United States, the Club experienced growth in countries such as Italy, France, the Netherlands, and Belgium. The members base kept growing up to nine million members. Thousands of online and offline stores in the five continents became Clubshop Rewards Merchant Affiliates. In 2018 the Clubshop brand was acquired by Proprofit Worldwide Ltd. Proprofit is a marketing company founded in 2013 by Fabrizio Perotti and Giuseppe Francavilla, the Clubshop Executive Directors who successfully developed the DHS-Club and Clubshop brands in Italy from 2001 to 2012. Since 2018, Clubshop has undertaken a business restructuring process intended to restore operations and growth to levels seen in the early 2000s.

Controversy

In the early 2000s, DHS Club policy allowed DHS Club VIP members to sign up people for free to become DHS Club members. With this policy making it so easy to sign up new members, a few DHS Club VIP Members took advantage of the policy by signing people up to be DHS Club members without their consent. As a result, the DHS Club was put on many blacklists by

spam Spam most often refers to: * Spam (food), a consumer brand product of canned processed pork of the Hormel Foods Corporation * Spamming, unsolicited or undesired electronic messages ** Email spam, unsolicited, undesired, or illegal email messages ...

prevention groups such as

Spamhaus The Spamhaus Project is an international organisation based in the Principality of Andorra, founded in 1998 by Steve Linford to track email spammers and spam-related activity. The name ''spamhaus'', a pseudo-German expression, was coined by Lin ...

to prevent the DHS Club from sending email and DHS Club revenues dropped 70%. A Spamhaus spokesman said that spam played a major role in the club's success. In 2002, the DHS Club created a policy against spamming, and instituted a double

opt-in Opt-in email is a term used when someone is not initially added to an emailing list and is instead given the option to join the emailing list. Typically, this is some sort of mailing list, newsletter, or advertising. Opt-out emails do not ask ...

process for all membership requests, to prevent anyone from being registered as a DHS Club member without expressly confirming their membership request.

References

* * * * {{Multi-level marketing American companies established in 1997 Charlotte County, Florida Customer loyalty programs Multi-level marketing companies Online retailers of the United States Reward websites