Single product manages many stores' programs
Jack Kennamer stood in line at a Dick’s Sporting Goods store last November and watched as Black Friday shoppers fumbled through key chains packed with loyalty cards, while others clogged checkout lines while signing up for new cards. So Kennamer, president of East End -based LOC Enterprises, arrived at a solution: the LOC Card, a universal loyalty card that could be used at multiple retail merchants.
“It’s a game-changer in the retail loyalty market,” Kennamer says.
LOC Enterprises has established 10 LOC Card sales offices nationwide, including Cincinnati. The company is in discussions with small and large grocery chains, restaurants and retail outlets. Feedback has been overwhelmingly positive, according to Kennamer. He declined to name prospects, but said he expects to announce the first participating merchants within 30 days.
“We’ve spent the past 10 months developing the solution,” Kennamer said. “Sales guys are falling out of trees wanting to be part of what we’re doing.”
Consumers are accustomed to using one or two major credit cards at most any merchant anywhere in the world, and yet, according to ACI Worldwide, an international provider of payment systems, 27 percent of Americans are members of four or more retail loyalty and rewards programs. The good news for Kennamer is that, according to POPAI, a trade association for marketing at retail, 52 percent of Americans would prefer a single card that can hold all their memberships.
“For years, consumers have been asking for a solution to relieve them of carrying eight-plus individual loyalty cards everywhere they go,” Erin Rease, COO of Loyalty 360, the trade association for merchant loyalty programs, said in a statement. “Now there’s a solution.”
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