Together You Can Do It
A big threat to the smaller retailer is the arrival of the high volume retailer in town: the lower prices – at least short-term - can woo away your customer base and threaten your existence.
But one of the strengths of the existing community grocery chains is you already have the customers. The smart move is to optimize that leverage before you have a fight on your hands, by becoming the anchor in the battle to retain local sales for local retailers. You do that through the implementation of the following:
Gas discounting. The HVR has to build his own gas station. However, the local gas station is already there. Midax enables you to generate rewards in your store, using your vendors’ promotional funds and use the gas station to redeem those rewards at the pump. Not just a couple of cents if you have a loyalty card, but targeted rewarding based on individual product sales.
You keep your prices up, so you don’t fight through newspaper ads and you discount deeply by intelligent allocation of promotional funds. Nobody builds a new gas station. We use the one, that is already there. Result: 50, 60, 70 cents off gallon of gas and all of it vendor money! That is competing, using existing local resources!
Next, implement your Midax gift card program so that other retailers can use it as a method of tender and offer discounts for using it as a form of tender: credit cards and such don’t give retailers a marketing edge, but offering 10% discount to your customers at the tire shop, the local florist, butcher, baker and candlestick maker is what motivates the existing customers to keep using the local stores in a manner the HVR cannot compete with. And your c-store is going to love being able to accept your gift card at the pump, now that credit card fees are hitting him for $2 or more per transaction! Yes, the card works at branded and unbranded gas stations and Midax at the pump is also PCI compliant!
The gift card you issue is a form of tender you support through the Midax switch you install. Transaction fees are whatever you decide them to be: all the other retailers need is a card reader hooked through the internet into your server. Settlement is automatic and you hold the funds!
Spiff the customer on the gift card or invoke the scrip option on the Midax gift card to channel funds to local schools, churches and other programs you and your fellow retailers want to support. It is your community, make sure you look after it and it will look after you!
The resources are all there. Midax helps you unlock them, by providing the hooks and the infrastructure to enable you to band together to your benefit, to your customers’ benefit and to the benefit of the unique environment of your community.
