CUC International

CUC (Comp-U-Card) International Inc. is a membership-based consumer services conglomerate with travel, shopping, auto, dining, home improvement and financial services offered to more than 60 million customers worldwide based out of Stamford, Connecticut and founded by Kirk Shelton and Walter Forbes. In 1998, it became involved in a Securities and Exchange Commission investigation into what, at the time, was the biggest accounting scandal in corporate history.

Their main product, a shopping service, originally a telephone-based drop-ship service called Comp-U-Card begun in 1973, was made available online to users of The Source in the mid-1980s, and later CompuServe after its purchase of The Source. It later offered its Shoppers Advantage service on America Online, Prodigy, GEnie and Delphi as well. It was perhaps the first company conducting electronic commerce, although its web based service first went online in 1995.

Founded in 1973 by Walter Forbes, CUC's main line of operations was its mail-order clubs such as Shopper’s Advantage, AutoVantage, Traveler’s Advantage, and its Comp-U-Card program, and had been trying to find a way to streamline its clubs and sell retail through a kind of interactive televisions. In an age before the internet and sites such as Amazon.com, this idea was innovative.

CUC went through various company presidents and lost a lot of money during the ‘70’s and by 1979 was losing more than $2 million a year. By 1983, Forbes and his company had found investors such as Reader's Digest and Eckerd Drugs but had lost nearly $14 million. After licensing their “interactive shopping” idea in Europe, the Morgan Stanley group took CUC public in the United States in 1983 and raised $20 million.

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