Summer - InsideOutdoor Magazine

than the promotional period to pay off the debt. The card has an
annual APR of 23 percent. The company also could collect late
fees, if customers made delinquent payments.
By themselves, individual small specialty outdoor retailers
aren’t a lucrative market for GE Money. But taken on aggregate
as a collective volume business, GE Money is banking that
small retailers will make the program worth while.
The Sport Finance Program is a turnkey solution for retailers
in that GE Money provides a dedicated credit card terminal,
marketing materials and signage, staff training and continuous
support, all at no cost as long as the participating retailer meets
the minimum charge volume of $36,000 a year.
GE handles all customer billing, and the retailer is not responsible
for any collections or owed sums should a customer
fail to make payments, says Murphy.
Once retailers are up and rolling they can expect to see 10
percent to 15 percent of sales transactions using the GE Sport
credit card, notes Murphy, as long as they do a good job of
pushing the program.
In general, Murphy says the program is most beneficial
for retailers that pull in around $500,000 a year in receipts,
although there are a handful of retailers in the program that
sell less than that.
One option for retailers that sit beneath that sales threshold
is to pay $39 a month to be part of the program. Some retailers
may want to consider this if it would be beneficial for them to
run the program for a couple of months during a busy selling
season, offers Murphy.
In general, sporting goods customers are a good credit risk.
Although GE Money will provide credit limits up to $10,000 in
the Sport program, Murphy says the typical credit line is less
than half that. In addition, the typical customer uses only a fraction
of available credit, leaving open-to-buy dollars that can be
used for other retail promotions.
In all, about 70 percent of applicants in the sporting goods
segment get approved for a credit line, with the minimum
amount being $1,000. However, even if a customer’s credit is
not the best and he can only be approved for the minimum, GE
Money will try to make accommodations.
“We have something in our system called Meet the Sale Logic,”
says Murphy. “If someone comes in with fairly good credit,
we will do everything we can to meet the sale.”
Thus, if a customer qualified for only the minimum ($1,000)
but was looking to make a total purchase of $1,100, GE would
in all likelihood “meet that sale and approve the customer up to
$1,100 in order to help that merchant make the sale,” he says.
That philosophy is in line with the structure of the program,
which is designed to make implementing and using the program
simple, leaving the retailer to focus on the core business
and how best to incorporate promotional finance into a store’s
sales strategy.
For example, the customer application process takes only
30 | InsideOutdoor | Summer 2007