Introduction
Maidenhead Aquatics is a leading UK fishkeeping retailer with more than 800 dedicated staff across 160 stores. Switching from paper vouchers to plastic gift cards had already doubled the associated revenue, but then their supplier changed tack and could no longer provide a custom plastic gift card system, so Maidenhead turned to Reward-It.
The Challenge
Switching from gift vouchers to plastic gift cards had already:
• Doubled the revenue stream
• Led to 10% breakage revenue from expired gift cards
• Dramatically increased security, by reducing the incentive for break-ins.
Maidenhead Aquatics had six months to find, and migrate to, a new prepaid plastic gift card system supplier that would work with the mixture of technologies used across its stores. At the time only half of them had an EPoS in place. This was complicated by the group being made up of nine businesses that had different accounting requirements.
There was a hard November deadline that clashed with the beginning of the Christmas peak prepaid gift card sales period, which amounted to 70% of annual turnover. In addition, it had to be completed so customers did not notice any change.
The Benefits
• Seamlessly migrated a £150,000 revenue stream to Reward-It’s gift card system
• Gift card holders and revenue remained undisturbed
• Ideal for complex retail chains
• Responsive installation service
• Consistently rolled out across stores that use inconsistent technology combinations
• 100% reliability
• Retailer networks can track the location of prepaid gift card purchases and redemptions for financial reconciliation
The Solution
Reward-It took over our custom-made plastic gift cards and effectively replicated the service at a fairly minimal cost. There was no capital outlay, and customers with gift cards didn’t notice the change.
This gift card system is ideal for retailers who don’t have a full EPoS system. We also use it to provide plastic credit notes, because they’re redeemable in any of our stores,” explained Charlie Laver, Commercial Manager at Maidenhead Aquatics.
Retailers using Reward-It’s plastic loyalty and gift card systems pay a monthly fee, so there’s no capex.
The Result
“Reward-It were incredibly responsive and delivered what we’d asked them to do in a tight timescale. The look of the custom-branded plastic gift cards remained consistent and didn’t jeopardise the in-store marketing that we’d invested in so far,” Charlie commented.
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