With more than 150 on our newsagent customers now signed up for offering the Blackhawk gift cards, we are working hard to help them attract customers.

The image shows the second marketing poster we have created.  This will be released once we have final approval from Blackhawk international. Our approach to the Blackhawk opportunity shows off the Tower Systems difference.

From the free marketing collateral, to our advice sheet, FAQ document and other support at our eziPass website and over the phone, we are show the difference between merely offering a product through our software and providing genuine support.

We are showing how a proactive Point of Sale software company goes beyond the software and technical support and helps customers unlock the full value of the business opportunity.

Our approach to Blackhawk provides another opportunity showing sales prospects the Tower Systems difference.

We are waiting on final approval before we release the two posters we have developed exclusively for our retailer partners selling the Blackhawk gift card range.

We are proud to show off our innovation and the type of business-building help we provide our retail partners beyond the Point of Sale techology itself.

We developed two quite different posters to provide our retailers with a choice.

Once we have Blackhawk approval the artwork will be made available to our customers.

Adorn Jewels have taken the opportunity of our in-house gift card design service, producing beautiful gift cards which can be used with our jeweller software for sale to customers.  Each gift card has a unique barcode which ties back to the customer account to which the value of the gift card is easily loaded using the software.

We realised early on after developing our gift card / gift voucher facilities that we needed to offer our customers an easier way of leveraging this beyond the software.  Our in-house gift card design and packaging service has achieved this with many Tower Systems customers taking up the service.

We back our card design service up with a Chins based printing service.  This results in high quality cards at a low price.

We also provide training an support on implementing gift cards into the business.  We are lucky to have been exposed to gift cards across a number of retail channels, providing useful broad experience from which we can draw when asked for advice.

Up to date advice on the Blackhawk giftcard range has been published at the eziPass website.  The new Frequently Asked Questions document addresses the most common questions we are asked about the Blackhawk offer before people sign up.  This FAQ document will evolve over time - based on questions from our customers.

With more than 120 of our customers signed up to offer Blackhawk, considerable work is being done to process the paperwork and get display stands out to the stores as quickly as possible.

Next week we will be sharing selling tips with our customers, to help them make the most of the Blackhawk gift card opportunity. These tips will be exclusive to Tower Systems customers.  They will provide another example of the Tower Advantage ^TM in action.

The Blackhawk giftcard range is an excellent opportunity for retailers keen to service the lucrative last minute gift marketplace.

Our gift card design and manufacturing service is getting plenty of attention from retailers using our Point of Sale software.  They like that we can easily help them leverage the gift card facilities in our software to provide them with something to sell on the occasion that they do not have the item a customer wants to buy as a gift.

We have a suite of off the shelf gift card artwork ready and also develop fresh artwork is required from scratch.

While designing and manufacturing gift cards may not seem a natural fit for a software company to some, to us it makes sense if we are to truly serve the needs of our customers.

We understand that software alone does not provide the solution in some cases.  By going the extra mile and delivering a complete gift card solution, including implementation training, we are helping our customers make the most from their investment.

Our leadership in the gift card space for independent retailers, especially newsagents and gift shops, has been recognised with requests recently for us to write articles on how retailers can use these opportunities to grow their businesses.

The articles, which will be published later this month and next month, not only make the business case but they also explain the mechanics.  By breaking down the gift card processes to something a retailer can understand, we have found that more are embracing the opportunity and making sales they would otherwise have missed.

Our passion for gift cards has come from our own experiences in our retail businesses.