Gift Cards

The American Booksellers Association's schedule of educational offerings at BookExpo America doesn't end with Thursday's "Day of Education." Informational sessions continue on Friday and Saturday, June 1 - 2. Among the programs on Friday at the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center are two Users Group Meetings: a BookSense.com Users Group Meeting and a Book Sense Gift Cards Users Group Meeting.

BookSense.com Users Group Meeting

Givex, Book Sense's partner in gift card processing, is migrating the current store administrative website to a more secure portal website. The new portal will add an extra level of security to the program's administration and transaction processing. Book Sense is also moving its gift card program fulfillment services to a company in the U.S. that will expedite card and presenter delivery times.

Book Sense gift cards featuring Random House Children's Book characters The Cat in the Hat and pat the bunny are now available for purchase through the end of the year. The cards are available thanks to Random House Children's Books, which has given Book Sense permission to use the artwork through 2007.

Since the inception of the Book Sense Gift Card program in fall 2003 through December 31, 2006, participating stores have sold 700,100 cards, with a total value of more than $18 million and an average sale per card of $25.96. For the 2006 holiday season, Book Sense Gift Card sales grew nine percent over last year.

If a bookseller encounters problems processing Book Sense gift cards, help is available from the program's administrator, Givex, 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Before contacting Givex, however, booksellers should consider a few other options:

Although most stores may choose to sell just a few different Book Sense gift cards designs, there are now 36 different designs that may be offered for redemption at any store with Book Sense. The latest additions are six new custom cards from Kepler's of Menlo Park, California, and one from the Harry W. Schwartz Bookshop in Bloomfield, Wisconsin, in conjunction with the health resource center Small Stones.

As every retailer knows, thieves are an inventive lot. It seems that for every season, and for every technological advance, a new scam appears that hurts businesses and consumers alike. One of the newest involves the theft of gift card ID numbers that allow thieves access to card balances. Here's how it works: A thief will write down the numbers on gift cards displayed in a store, but does not purchase or steal the cards. The thief will then wait a few days before calling the store to ask what the current balance is for a card number he or she has recorded.

A recent survey of retail spending and trends commissioned by Deloitte & Touche USA concludes that gift cards will continue to be the top gift purchase this holiday season. The report notes that approximately 66 percent of consumers are planning to buy an average of 4.6 gift cards (up from 3.9 in 2005).

As the all-important holiday gift-giving season approaches (Thanksgiving is just six weeks away), Book Sense reminds booksellers participating in the gift card program to stock up on cards and presenters to ensure they can meet the growing demand: Last year, sales of Book Sense gift cards in November and December totaled over $3 million, an increase of more than 38 percent over the same period in 2004.

As stores gear up for a busy holiday season, retail experts predict the popularity of gift cards will continue to increase. Last year, the National Retail Federation reported that, in 2005, consumers spent $18.48 billion on gift cards during the holidays, an increase of almost seven percent from the previous year.

Booksellers participating in the Book Sense Gift Card program will notice a change in this month's ACH notification process. In an effort to provide all booksellers with relevant information, all stores will now receive a monthly Compensation Report via e-mail.

Beginning this week, booksellers who use WebPOS to process Book Sense Gift Cards will be able to redeem (accept as a form of payment) multiple gift cards at the same time. The new functionality works in a fashion similar to the way booksellers can activate (sell) multiple gift cards at one time.

Book Sense and POS vendor Anthology have announced that Anthology users can begin selling and redeeming Book Sense gift cards directly from the cash register. The Book Sense Gift Card Module was released this spring with Visual Anthology, Version 5. Anthology is the fifth POS vendor to integrate with the Book Sense Gift Card Program, which is administered by Givex.

On February 14, the U.S. Commerce Department delivered a valentine to the nation's economy. At 8:30 a.m., the agency released a monthly sales estimate for January showing that retail and food services sales were up 2.3 percent from December 2005 and had risen 8.8 percent over January 2005. Estimated January sales were $365.4 billion, adjusted for seasonal variation and holiday and trading-day differences, but not for price changes.

While overall holiday sales ranged from slightly down to solid gains at bookstores across the country, sales of Book Sense gift cards showed strong overall increases. According to gift card sales figures recently compiled by the American Booksellers Association, sales of Book Sense gift cards in November and December 2005 increased more than 38 percent over the same period last year. Total gift card sales for the final two months of the year totaled over $3 million. Sales (both activations and increments) since the program's inception in October 2003 have reached almost $11 million.