shopping
When the Brand You
Trae Bodge has made herself a go-to media shopping expert
WRITTEN BY CINDY SCHWEICH HANDLER
40
HOLIDAY 2017 MONTCLAIR MAGAZINE
Truetrae
Traebodge
truetrae.com
C
areers can take random
twists and turns that in
hindsight seem destined
to happen. Trae Bodge’s
mother owned a beauty
shop, and the Montclair
resident originally worked in the
beauty industry, first at the cosmetics
retailer Kiehl’s, and then at her own
business in the mid-’90s.
When friends gave her the oppor-
tunity to work for their website, she
segued to writing gift guides and
providing tips for budget-minded
consumers. That job led to a year of
freelancing for a coupon website, and
then four years as spokesperson for a
young company called RetailMeNot,
where she received media training
and appeared on TV network QVC.
“I would be on satellite media
tours where you sit in a room and
do 25 interviews in a row,” she says.
She traveled for the company, blog-
ging and working with the press
relations team, but she could also
work remotely from her home in
Montclair, where she’d moved with
her husband and daughter from
Jackson Heights, Queens. It was an
easy commute to New York City,
where she recorded brief shopping
segments.
The Austin-based company grew
fast — too fast, and last year Bodge
lost her job in a round of company-
wide layoffs. But she took the oppor-
tunity of the proverbial closing door
to open another.
“It was the best thing,” Bodge
says. “I needed a push to do this kind
of work for myself.” She built the
website traebodge.com — True Trae,
a Consumer’s Best Friend — and
partnered with a number of coupon
and cash back sites.