Kachingo folds with $1.4m left

By SIMON HENDERY

The shoppers' numbers game Kachingo! is closing after just over two years, with $1.4 million in unclaimed prizes.

The company behind it, Global Online Promotions, claimed yesterday the programme, started in December 2000, had been a successful pilot "and it is now time to take it to bigger markets overseas".

But the demise of the New Zealand programme, backed by millionaire Eric Watson before he pulled out, appears to be more to do with a lack of support from participating retailers.

Tickets will not be issued after the end of this month, but retailers will check them until the end of April. After that, tickets can be checked at Woolworths or online.



Woolworths, Big Fresh, Price Chopper, BP and Super Liquor stores give Kachingo! tickets to customers who spend more than a certain amount - usually around $25 to $30.

Ticket holders can check them later in a Machine in the store to see if they have won prizes.

Richard Umbers, chief operating officer of Progressive Enterprises, which runs Woolworths, Big Fresh and Price Chopper supermarkets, said Global Online was talking about its overseas plans, so the retailers and Global Online decided that "the best thing to do was to wind it up".

Progressive inherited Kachingo! when it bought the Woolworths supermarket group last year, and said soon after the purchase that it was reviewing its participation in the scheme.

The Weekend Herald knows of at least one other retailer who has been expressing disappointment in the customer pulling power of the scheme.

At the BP Fanshawe St petrol station last night, customers were nonplussed or had never heard of Kachingo!

Television presenter Erika Takacs, who once won a bottle of Diet Coke from it, said: "I have paid absolutely no attention to them. I went on the internet once to check a ticket, but basically they are a waste of paper."

Others said they had never heard of Kachingo! and did not know how to get tickets or redeem prizes.



Otago University marketing professor Rob Lawson said there was "a lot of unnecessary hype about loyalty schemes in general".

He had made no particular study of Kachingo! but thought it might have been at a disadvantage to other schemes because it required a bit more effort from customers to check their tickets.

The game has given away more than $5.1 million in cash to 126,000 shoppers and more than 1.5 million instant prizes.

The Kachingo! website says just under $1.4 million is outstanding in unclaimed prizemoney.

The scheme makes its money by charging retailers and manufacturers whose products feature as specials.

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

"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."

Mr Wikeley said negotiations were being conducted with interested parties in Britain, Asia and the United States.

Previous publicity material from Global Online has not referred to the New Zealand programme as a pilot, and a press release issued last October said: "The future of Kachingo! is very bright."

Global Online Promotions started Kachingo! with backing from Eric Watson's Cullen Capital but he sold its 52 per cent stake two years later.

At its height, more than two million Kachingo! game lines were issued a week.

But fast-food chain KFC tested it in its Auckland stores for about five months and decided not to continue with it.