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The Gift Voucher Shop (GVS) launched in 2002 after a strategic partnership
with An Post, selling their store gift vouchers through the Post Office network,
corporate sales team, online and through their call center.
Founded by
entrepreneur
Michael Dawson, the store gift vouchers were available
for a portfolio of 550
Retail
Partners nationwide through four convenient sales
channels. What The Gift
Voucher Shop achieved was an innovation in gifting;
consumers no longer
needed to travel to a particular store to buy a gift voucher,
they now had the
widest
choice of gift vouchers available to them under one
roof in their locality.
The Gift Voucher Shop’s strategy is founded on the provision of choice, convenience and flexibility in gifting. They clearly achieved this in 2004 when they launched the exciting multi-store paper gift voucher, the One4all Gift Voucher. This was a turning point in the Irish gift voucher market and the first of its kind in Europe. You could now buy a gift voucher from any of the four sales channels and spend it in any of the One4all Retail Partners comprising now of 4,500 outlets nationwide.
The success of the One4all was phenomenal and gave GVS an added competitive advantage within the corporate sector. The corporate business gathered great momentum on the back of this innovation. Coupled then with their promotion and education of the BIK benefit on gift vouchers their client base grew rapidly.
With such success being evident in Ireland it was no surprise that a lot of work was being done to develop this innovative concept internationally. In 2004 GVS joined forces with Maltapost and launched the One4all Gift Voucher throughout the Maltapost network across Malta and Gozo. Then in 2005 they launched in their largest market to date, the UK through the Post Office network of over 12,000 Post Offices.
GVS moved with technology and launched their most successful product to date in 2007, the One4all multi-store electronic Gift Card. GVS have followed this with the recent launch of the product in the UK in August 2009. The product is visa supported and issued by TSYS Europe. This has placed GVS in a highly sought after position and has opened up a plethora of opportunities in the Card industry, including the highly successful Post Office® Christmas Club in the UK.
GVS now have over 4,500 One4all Retail Partner outlets in Ireland and over 17,000 in the UK. GVS have experienced many more milestones since their launch.
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