Our creative team at Tower Systems has been busy this past week developing new gift card artwork for customers of our Point of Sale software.

We have off the shelf designs which can be used as a base or we can create artwork from scratch.   Our team is briefed by each customer before designing artwork for the front and rear of their gift cards.

Once we have final approval of the artwork, we arrange for manufacture of the cards in China through a quality production company we have found.

More an more of our customers are using these professionally produced cards to extend the reach of their brand and to bring structure to the gift and loyalty card offers.  We are glad to be in a position to go beyond the software functionality in these areas and help with execution of the customer interface.

The quality of gift and loyalty cards is crucial for retailers who want a quality and professional image projected.

While we like to think that every innovation we release will be a hit, we are realistic in our expectations. We have found over the years that we are better off letting the market show us what it likes. Sometimes we are quite surprised.

Our recently released range of gift cards is one such surprise. Many of our customers have contacted up about getting gift cards made for their businesses. These are proving more popular than we expected.

While users of our software can source gift cards from anywhere, we are pleased that many are partnering with us and the suppliers we have sourced for our own retail businesses.

We offer off the shelf designs as well as from scratch designs – all using the logos of our customers.

The success of the cards is a testament to the efforts of our marketing and creative teams.

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.

The range of gift cards we have had professionally made are proving to be a real hit with newsagents and gift shops at trade shows.  They are a genuine point of difference for us.  Retailers love them because they are able to sell something when a shopper cannot find what they need and because the cards extend their retail brand. besides providing the software to manage the cards, we take care of organising gift card design and manufacture. Having done this for our own retail stores, we are able to help our customers get up and running with gift cards quickly.

We were first to market with the new range of bank quality cards and this is driving excellent business for us.  They were a hit at both the Gift Fair in Melbourne and the GNS newsagent trade show in Melbourne.

We have developed artwork for new gift cards for one group of users of our s0ftware.  While our users can create a gift voucher using our software, these beautiful gift cards take the ‘gift’ to a new level.  Professionally produced to credit card specification, they compare favourably with the quality you would expect to see at David Jones or Myer.

We have twelve designs in this suite and ideas for more.  The photo does not do the artwork for each card justice … yes, we are very proud.

The cards work directly and exclusively with our software.  On the reverse of each card is a unique barcode connecting it back to the value of the gift loaded.

Many of our newsagent users are in the process of receiving retail packs to support the new range of prepaid visa product now available for direct sale through our software. Just in time for Christmas sales, these prepaid visa cards are a good replacement for the now collapsed BOPO card from Bill Express. There are four different products available.

We are the only software company in the newsagency channel offering direct availability of these products. The technical feat of this is considerable since we are vending direct from our software to the supplier of these products. Other software companies which may bring this to market will do so through a third party.

Getting through compliance testing for banking related products is complex and time consuming. It is a testament to the professionalism of our software development and testing team that we have achieved this.

Access to these products and the necessary software enhancement is free for all users of our current software.

We have offered support for gift cards and gift vouchers for quite some time now. They are a great way to sell something when the customer is not sure what to buy. We use these ourselves in our group of four Sophie Randall gift shops with success.

In the case of our Sophie Randall gift card, customers can buy the card at one of our stores and redeem at any other. This is where it works well since we cover a fair bit of the Melbourne suburban area with the stores.

We have an excellent advice sheet for any of our users wanting to use the gift card / gift voucher facility as well as considerable personal experience on the card and offer variations in our retail businesses and others.

We have been working very closely with a client on the launch of their store branded gift card.  Our software will manage the cards across multiple locations, with customers able to pay for purchases off the card in any of the company’s locations.

While well entrenched in major retailers, small business has been slow to embrace the store branded gift card opportunity.  This is in part due to limited redemption opportunities and in part due to the challenge of managing the financial side of the card.

While we have clients who have used account facilities in our software to manage gift cards, our new facilities take the offer to a new level and will help our small business customers more effectively compete.

One of our customers is preparing to go live with a stored value card - a gift card - across a group of stores. Using our software a customers will be able to purchase a gift card in one store, give it to a friend and have them redeem in any or all of the stores.

While this functionality is common in big business, it is uncommon in small business. It is another facility we have added to our software without charge to our existing customer base.

we are excited because we have been closely involved in the process of card design as well as the back-end technology to mange balances, breakage etc.