Name Change Announcement Comes Nearly a Year After Investment by Two Leading Private Equity Firms
Chattanooga, TN—September 28, 2009 VIPGift announced today that it has changed its name to Incentium. The change recognizes the Company’s evolution from an incentive fulfillment business to a full service incentives and loyalty solution Company with products ranging across many customer segments and needs.
“The rebranding of the Company to Incentium symbolizes the expansion of our solutions and capabilities. Recently, we have introduced a number of new products and new technologies,” said Richard Char, Company CEO and President. “These new products and technologies were developed over the past year by Incentium – building on insights gained from years of deep client relationships, the Company’s broad range of prepaid reward choices, and world class fulfillment and customer services capabilities. During the same time, we have added a number of key personnel in technology, project management, sales and marketing. These investments have been enabled by the financial resources and counsel of our two top-tier private equity firms.”
These two firms, Summit Partners and Bridgescale Partners, recapitalized the Company in October 2008, moving the Company’s business model forward. Relative to 2008, Incentium has experienced more than 48 percent growth in transaction volume in the first half of 2009, adding 15 new Fortune 1000 companies to its existing client base of leading businesses.
“We have been greatly impressed working with VIPGift on our employee incentive programs for the last several years,” said Ed Warhol, human resource manager at W.W. Grainger, Inc. (NYSE: GWW). “The results and customer service have been outstanding and we are looking forward to the continuing partnership and further innovation now that the Company has changed its name to Incentium.” With 2008 sales of $6.9 billion, Grainger is a leading supplier of facilities maintenance products serving businesses and institutions domestically and internationally.
Incentium has recently introduced its second generation series of powerful enterprise-class software solutions. These solutions represent a significant upgrade in features and functionality, which were developed using the latest technologies. These software applications have been developed to substantially improve Incentium’s front-end capabilities to manage customer and employee motivation
to achieve sales goals, retention, and increase productivity. Further upgrades and additions to this product suite will be announced in the coming months, with recent product announcements including: CAST (Customer Acquisition Sales Tool) 2.0, which assists sales representatives in “closing the deal” with customers who are on the fence while allowing managers to dynamically adjust incentive terms and rules. EARN (Employee Appreciation Recognition and Nomination) 2.0, a reward management application with specific features for recognizing, rewarding, and retaining employees, contractors, and vendors for a variety of objectives. CLAIM (Customer Loyalty Appreciation and Incentive Management) 2.0, a loyalty management application that allows companies to dynamically configure reward levels for customers based on a variety of factors including spend, usage, product type, geography and other relevant company segments. LEAP (Loyalty Engagement Award Platform) 2.0, a points-based application that increases employee productivity by directing behavior through providing targeted rewards. SCORE (Sales Channel Optimization Rewards Engine) 2.0, a points-based application that tracks, manages, reports, and issues incentives to drive direct sales and partner channel performance.
The Company has been adding significant resources across-the-board from front-end management to back-end fulfillment with an increasing delivery of comprehensive service solutions that reflect the one-stop criteria that many companies are requiring of incentive providers today.
“Companies want solutions that use the most effective incentive techniques and strategies based on flexible system tools to enable them to respond to changing needs quickly, and outperform the competition,” said Gavin Delany, Vice President of Marketing. “The Company’s name change to Incentium represents our evolution to provide that full solution. The new tagline, ‘Motivating with Choice. Inspiring Results.’ highlights both our historical competitive strength of having the widest array of incentive awards and our newer strength of providing full end-to-end incentive solutions. Many research studies have demonstrated the power of having choice in rewards to motivating real behavior change and creating lasting results. Combined with the Company’s next generation innovative incentive management applications, we have greatly expanded our ability to deliver true results to clients.”
“The entire Company is excited about the name change and what it symbolizes for the future,” added Char. “We are committed to retaining our knowledge of what works well in our business while continuing to innovate our results-enhancing software and services in order to serve clients well into the future.”
About Incentium
Incentium (www.incentium.com), formerly VIPGift, is a leading provider of employee, customer, and sales channel incentive and loyalty programs to the Fortune 500 and top tier emerging businesses. Incentium has distinguished itself by providing full service incentive solutions and technologies to help drive growth and achieve strategic corporate objectives for its customers. Clients use Incentium’s
products and services for customer acquisition, loyalty, and rebate programs; employee recognition, service award, productivity, and retention programs; and sales incentives and channel performance programs. Incentium’s wide array of customized rewards – including points, merchandise, prepaid cards, and merchant cards – have helped position the company as a market leader in the incentives industry. The Company is backed by Summit Partners, a private equity growth fund with more than $11 billion in capital, and Bridgescale Partners, a private equity and venture capital fund focusing on late-stage, technology-enabled companies. Incentium was founded as VIPGift in 2000 and is based in Chattanooga, Tennessee with offices throughout the US.
About Summit Partners
Summit Partners (www.summitpartners.com) provides private equity and venture capital for growth companies. Founded in 1984, Summit has raised more than $11 billion in capital and has provided equity, recapitalization, and management buyout financing to more than 300 growing companies across a range of industries. These companies have completed nearly 125 public offerings and more than 110 have been acquired through strategic mergers and sales. Summit Partners has offices in Boston, Palo Alto, and London. Summit Partners works with outstanding management teams that have self-financed their companies to profitability and market leadership. The firm’s notable financial services and business services investments include Card Capture Services, FleetCor Technologies, Global Cash Access Holdings, iPayment, Liquidnet Holdings, optionsXpress Holdings, and Triton Systems.
About Bridgescale Partners
Bridgescale Partners (www.bridgescale.com) is a Silicon Valley-based private equity and venture capital firm that invests in U.S. based, late-stage, technology-enabled companies. Bridgescale’s investment focus includes growth equity in corporate spinouts, venture-backed and bootstrapped companies, middle market private equity investments, and management-led buyouts. The firm provides high-value equity, bringing years of investing and company building experience in growth technology companies. The founders have a successful track record with 65 M&A and IPO exits. The Bridgescale team assists its portfolio companies in scaling their businesses through its diverse operating, investing and deal structuring expertise, as well as its extensive network of industry relationships.