Eureka strikes when it will – and for entrepreneur Frank Buddenbrock he got the idea for his latest company while getting a haircut, of all things. While talking to his stylist, Mary Wilson of Westlake Haircutting and Styling, he learned of her dissatisfaction with Groupon Inc., the giant Internet discount site based in Chicago. The salon owner complained that Groupon made her work “very cheap,” keeping half of what she made, and after subtracting the discount to customers, it didn’t pay off. “I did a lot of work for very, very little money,” she said, figuring she worked on 100 people and only retained three as return customers. So Buddenbrock started CouponShoppingNetwork.com. The Agoura Hills company offers discounts, but instead of taking a percentage of every sale, as Groupon does, it charges a flat $300 fee for each ad, which runs for as long as the merchant wants. Also, consumers pay the merchant directly, while Groupon charges customers through its website. “We’re kind of calling it a Groupon killer,” Buddenbrock said. “We have very low overhead, so we don’t need to make a ton of money.” Groupon did not respond to repeated requests for comment. Buddenbrock’s site went live three months ago, and 20 companies have signed up to post promotions on it. They include auto shops, restaurants and cellulite reduction clinics located from Agoura Hills to San Diego. The site is staffed by four employees, including members of Buddenbrock’s family, who live in Agoura Hills. Visitors to the site can browse for coupons, select the ones they like and pay $1 for each coupon, which can save them as much as several thousand dollars. Buddenbrock has another online business, a search engine called FindAnExpertOnline.com, and he hopes to leverage the coupon network to get into helping merchants use email and text messaging for marketing. Martha Spelman, a branding and marketing consultant in Playa del Rey, said it’s smart to focus on how retailers can keep the customer coming back. “Companies don’t do that. They kind of just do the one-off Groupon and think people are going to remember and come back,” she said. “They don’t.” Wilson, the hair stylist, reported that her experience at CouponShoppingNetwork has been good. Her deal for a $19 men’s haircut has sold out. Buddenbrock hopes to keep staff and overhead low, but the challenge is to build traffic to a Groupon-like scale and expand to markets outside of Los Angeles. “If we have a good product and people have a good experience, both on the merchant side and the client side, they’re going to come back and they’re going to refer their friends,” he said. – Mateo Melero