Kachingo! to stop issuing tickets in New Zealand

News release kachingo - 1
14 March 2003

Kachingo! to stop issuing tickets in New Zealand

The Kachingo! shoppers' rewards programme is to cease issuing tickets in New Zealand at the end of March 2003. All prize winners can continue to claim their prizes for up to six months from the respective draw date.

The company behind the programme says Kachingo! has proved itself in New Zealand and it is now time to take it to bigger markets overseas.

Global Online Promotions (NZ) Limited (GONZ) says from Sunday 30 March 2003 there will be no more Kachingo! tickets issued by remaining village partners Woolworths, Big Fresh, Price Chopper, BP and Super Liquor stores.

All Kachingo! cash prizes can still be claimed from tickets issued up to the end of March (for the usual six months from their draw date).

The company says all Kachingo! retail partners will continue to check tickets up to April 30, 2003. From 1 May until 30 September 2003, tickets can be checked at all Woolworths stores or online at www.kachingo.co.nz.

"The New Zealand pilot programme, as devised to test the viability of the systems behind Kachingo!, has now come to a successful conclusion," says GONZ executive director Ken Wikeley.

"The pilot programme has proven itself and we now know Kachingo! is a high impact loyalty programme with strong technology systems. The programme will now be taken to bigger markets that have the scale to support paying cash prizes of sufficient size to gain and retain the attention of shoppers.

"Naturally we are pleased Kachingo! has proved both its ability to influence retail sales results and that the technology platform is very effective. Now the international prospects are looking extremely buoyant for both the Kachingo! programme and the New Zealand-developed systems behind it."

Mr Wikeley says from April 1, 2003, The Atlantis Group will assume the Kachingo! licence for the New Zealand and Australian markets from GONZ.

"All the work put in to develop those systems will be rewarded. Effective customer reward programmes and systems are in big demand both here and internationally, and we have an excellent product. Watch this space."

The Atlantis Group is an Auckland-based global investor in information management companies and has recently taken a 25 per cent holding in Global Online Systems Limited (GOSL).

GOSL is the New Zealand company that developed the Kachingo! rewards programme and the computer-based systems that support it, as well as being an associate company of GONZ.

GOSL plans to take Kachingo! to a number of full scale consumer markets and negotiations are underway with interested parties in the UK, Asia and the United States.

The system is versatile enough to be implemented in a number of ways including by single big retailers, as a full "village" of retail partners (as in New Zealand) and by customers who simply want to utilise Kachingo!'s advanced technology to reward and communicate with customers at the point of sale.

About Kachingo! Kachingo! is a customer rewards programme invented in New Zealand. It is the only one to give shoppers cash rewards just for shopping at any store within the Kachingo! village of partners. The village comprises BP, Super Liquor and Woolworths, Big Fresh and Price Chopper supermarkets. Since launch Kachingo! has paid out more than $5.1m in cash prizes to 126,263 customers and given away more than 1.5 million instant rewards.

ends

Issued for Kachingo! by Pead PR

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