Marching to the Beat of Your Own Drum
Custom coins are often created to increase team unity, to show appreciation to an employee, or to commemorate a specific event. From time to time, they’re also ordered as a fundraising effort by certain nonprofits. The sale of the coins can help to raise money for a particular cause. Instances of the coins being used in these manners are common. It’s always fun to hear the uses to which our customers put their coins, but rarely do we see situations where the ordered coins are being used in a completely unique fashion.
The Westfield Area Chamber of Commerce’s Gift Coin Program is one such situation. When we found out about the unique program the chamber of commerce created, we knew we had to reach out and get more information. When customers put their custom coins to new and unique uses, they prove that custom coins are for everyone.
The Westfield Area Chamber of Commerce’s Gift Coin Program
The Westfield Area Chamber of Commerce serves communities in New Jersey. The towns of Fanwood, Garwood, Mountainside, Scotch Plains and Westfield are all represented by the chamber; each is also represented on the front face of the current coins. It would have been easy enough to create a set of challenge coins that represented the different companies and members of the chamber. But the chamber had something a little more interesting in mind.
The program began in 1999, which was before Gene Jannotti, the chamber’s current executive director, was in his position, but he’s worked hard to keep the program going.
The way the gift coin program works is a person can go into one of the locations from which the coins are sold and purchase as many as they like for $25 a piece (plus a small $2.50 transaction fee). The individual coins are then as good as cash and accepted at any of the over 90 participating locations as payment. Once the coins are “spent” at the businesses, those business owners return the coins to the chamber of commerce and receive payment equal to the value of the coins (return one coin, receive $25, return four coins, receive $100, and so on). The coins themselves are put back into circulation.
The gift coin program is an interesting and unique answer to common, big business gift cards, and it’s designed to keep the money within small local businesses. According to Jannotti, “It’s really a shop local and support your local store environment. You can’t take the coins out to a Walmart or some other big box store, you can only use them at our local locations.”
The program has been a success both with the public and with the merchants because of the abundance of places that accept the coins and because the program incurs no cost to the merchants. For the customer buying the coins, “There’s a $2.50 service charge per purchase. Which means they can buy one coin, they can buy 10 coins, it’s just $2.50 for the transaction.” This small transaction fee means the chamber of commerce is not profiting off of the sale of the coin. Unlike with typical fundraising efforts that we see surrounding our challenge coins, the chamber of commerce’s gift coin program simply exists to keep the money within the local community. This transparency and altruism on the part of the chamber is part of what has made the program so popular.
Partnering with Signature Coins
Even though the program has been in place since 1999, the current coin, which is the third coin in the series, is the first one that was created by us. “We actually use to have one of our own business members that provided the coins for us. They are no longer a chamber member, so we went out and did an exhaustive look through and came across your company,” Jannotti explained when asked how he found Signature Coins.
The chamber of commerce was happy to partner with us because they liked our prices and presentation options, but it was the ability to customize their own design that really sealed the deal. “We wanted a design that we didn’t think could be duplicated by anybody and plagiarized to create havoc with us,” Jannotti said. To those ends, the custom engraving of sequential numbering was a strong factor in the decision the chamber made. “It just worked out perfectly, we’ve been very very satisfied,” Jannotti said about the experience of working with Signature Coins.
Make It Your Own
For the Westfield Area Chamber of Commerce, the holiday season is one of the busiest for the use of their gift coins. “This is the peak time, but there are other times. At the end of the school year, we find a lot of the parents buying these for their children to give to the coaches and teachers. So there’s another uptick there,” Jannotti explained. In addition to those moments, they also get sales throughout the year for birthdays, anniversaries and other gift-giving occasions.
One reason people are sometimes hesitant to purchase an order of challenge coins is because they don’t really know what to do with them. For so many, the concept of the challenge coins starts and stops with the process of handing them out to the intended recipients. If there’s one thing the story of the Westfield Area Chamber of Commerce teaches us, it’s that there are a number of uses for custom coins just waiting to be discovered.
If the traditional uses of custom coins simply won’t cut it for you, challenge yourself to come up with a new program. Maybe the small businesses in your area could benefit from a similar program to the one the Westfield area has in place. According to Jannotti, starting the program isn’t too difficult, “First, I would suggest they put their literature out there and line up the local businesses to sign up and say ‘Yes, we will accept the coins.’ That way when the coins are made and you start to sell them, you have a large enough set of redeemable locations.” From there, it’s really about marketing the program and making sure to continue to grow it with any new local businesses that come along.
Or perhaps there’s a different program that can serve you and your area just waiting to be found. Whatever the case may be, you can’t be sure until you try. The one thing we continue to learn here at Signature Coins is that the applications for challenge coins are really endless. Whatever you decide, we’ll be ready to help you meet those needs with a fully customizable product.
If you are interested in learning more about this Gift Coin program, you can contact Mr. Jannotti directly at gene@gwaccnj.com.
