US deal paying off for Visible Results

By PETER GRIFFIN

Auckland-based card technology company Visible Results is beginning to reap the rewards of its $14-million acquisition of US company Graphicard, winning a contract to supply its loyalty cards and terminals to the world's largest hardware store chain.

The company has signed a $15 million, three-year agreement with US-based True Value chain, which has around 6400 global outlets and sales of $US18 billion.

The contract came after Visible Results' chief executive officer, Michael Whittaker, spoke at a retail managers' conference last year.

Visible Results will this month begin manufacturing an initial batch of 625,000 thermal cards for the True Value programme and will also provide the card reading terminals in each outlet.

Mr Whittaker said the contract would boost the company's staff of around 250.

And although most of Visible Results' business comes from overseas, all hardware programming and data management would continue to be done at its Auckland centre.

"We won this business because we could bring a truly global perspective while most of our competitors had expertise limited to the United States. It shows that centralising services out of New Zealand really works."

Visible Results changed the face of retail customer relations management in New Zealand when it introduced Mobil Max cards for the petrol retailer's customers.

The thermal cards are used for customer incentive programmes and competitions and can be rewritten each time they are handed over to retail staff to display a new message.

Dymocks and KFC in Australia and Caltex in Singapore use Visible Results' thermo-chromic printing to deliver instant messages to customers and record purchases.

McDonald's is using the company's cards in the US, and Visible Results was negotiating a contract that would be "much bigger than the True Value chain deal," said Mr Whittaker.

The Graphicard acquisition gave Visible Results access to global patents for the thermal card technology and free rein to pursue big customers in the US, a market Mr Whittaker described as "untapped for this type of technology."