HY-VEE WINS RETAILER OF YEAR AWARD

JOEL ELSON

WEST DES MOINES, Iowa -- An aggressive marketing campaign of prepaid phone cards has won Hy-Vee Food Stores here recognition as retailer of the year.

Sprint, based in Washington, created the award this year to recognize the efforts of its retail partners in helping to promote the category and its Spree brand.

Hy-Vee was chosen from among several supermarket and convenience-store regional finalists, including Lucky Stores, QuikTrip, The Pantry, BP Oil and Allsup's. The award was based on the chain's innovative merchandising to promote and highlight calling cards at the store level, said Marlene Waltz, Sprint's director of prepaid cards, Overland Park, Kan.

Mike Tetmeyer, Hy-Vee's vice president of marketing, accepted the first-time award on behalf of the retailer last month. He was unavailable for comment.

The award also recognized a winning retail team effort among store management and personnel, sales brokers and Spree. In a category that's quickly become highly competitive, Hy-Vee targeted Mother's Day, back-to-school and graduation to aggressively promote its prepaid calling cards. Sales efforts ranged from encouraging checkers to offer suggestive selling ideas to customers, to discounting products and featuring them as tie-ins with a back-to-school purchase.

Hy-Vee played up a Sprint Mother's Day promotion in which customers who purchased a $10 or higher Spree card got an additional 10 minutes free. "Hy-Vee also discounted the cards to further sales," explained Karen Hardeman, a Sprint spokeswoman.

For graduation and back-to-school, phone cards were tied in with greeting card purchases. Shoppers making greeting-card purchases received a free five-minute Spree card. "The chain also came up with an innovative promotion in which customers who bought five General Mills products received a $5 Spree card," said Hardeman.

Moreover, Hy-Vee also developed an employee-incentive program that motivated store staffers to promote phone cards to shoppers in order to win free phone cards for themselves.

Retailer of the year awards included $500 and a trophy to the five regional finalists. Their brokers won a $250 gift certificate from the Sharper Image. The grand prize was a trophy and trip for two to Hawaii.