Giftcards

When I first started working in the lab at Limited Brands, there was no such thing as gift cards. Really, these essential gift items have not been around all that long. According to the National Retail Federation (NRF), in 2009 the average person will spend $139.91 on gift cards during the holidays. This is actually less than 2008's comps which were $147.33. Gift card spending is projected to be $23.63 billion this holiday season. Gift cards are good business for retailers for a number of reasons - one being receivers will spend more than the gift card value in the store, and second the receivers may not use them at all - which is excellent return!

One of the first brands to roll-out gift cards at the Limited was Victoria Secret Stores (VSS). I guess if your boyfriend wants you to wear sexy lingerie, but is too intimidated to go into the stores and feels it's too risky to pick it out himself, this can be an excellent choice. Testing gift cards in the lab proved to be a large task. First off selling gift cards - the scan to sell, then swipe to activate process was completely new. Completely new to all retailers mainly. Our scripts for activating corporate or brand credit cards would not work and selling merchandise that could come in any dollar amount (10, 20, 50, 100, 500) was a new concept. Also, there were special things we had to work out with provider of the cards - namely test cards. Lastly you have to add a new tender type - you know cash, check, debit, credit card and gift card with declining balances.

Credit cards and gift cards balances are verified and checked with a third party vendors. These third party vendors handled all our corporate credit cards. But we had different vendors for giftcards and another for check verification. So getting a group of test giftcards was part of the project and was a scramble in the end. The test cards had to end up being sold or activated in our test lab and then turned around and used for tendering. It was a slew of test scenarios - all new functional and manual testing.

After Victoria's Secret rolled their gift cards out, then of course all the other brands had similar projects. Our second generation of a gift card project was being able to use a Victoria's Secret gift card at Express, or an Express at Bath & Body works and the like. This Gen II GC project opened up a new slew of scenarios, because the retail math used at each of the brands was very different according to that brands business model. For example, does the cashier get "credit" for selling gift cards (answer: no) and do associate discount's work with gift cards (yes). Working out those intricacies and business rules was altogether new and fun.

Back of the corporate level there were new ways (and regulations) of reporting sales and usage of the giftcards. It was exciting new territory for us in store systems and newly created some bonds with merchandising management systems and loss prevention.

The main thing that sticks in my mind about the gift card project was a situation that occurred at Bath & Body Works. We received a slew of test gift cards and spent months testing them. In the final phases we finally were able to see what marketing had picked out as the image that was going to be on the card. It turned out that image was licensed or copyrighted. So after rolling out the cards to the pilot stores, corporate ended up having to get all their BBW gift cards reprinted with a different image. Of course this became a mad dash right before the Christmas season.

Credit card verification, gift cards and those learning's became a substantial part of my career path later. Now when I stand in line to buy my gift cards, I chuckle inside at the cashier's attempts to scan, ring and swipe for verification.