HelloWorld (Formerly ePRIZE): A Gilson Case Study
HelloWorld, based in Detroit, is a world leader in interactive promotions for more than 60 of the nation’s top 100 large-brand advertisers including Adidas, Colgate-Palmolive, Dell, Disney, General Mills, General Motors, HBO, and Wendy’s. Since its founding in 1999, HelloWorld has grown into the largest company of its type in the world — more than twice the size of its closest competitor — and has opened offices in Chicago, Dallas, New York, and London.
HelloWorld and Rapid Growth
HelloWorld has launched thousands of promotions in recent years – more than 800 in 2006 alone – offering prizes that range from Orville Redenbacher popcorn samples and Hardee’s breakfast sandwich coupons to Home Depot hot tubs and NASCAR vehicle parts. Almost every single promotion has been fulfilled by Gilson.
The rapid growth at HelloWorld combined with their unique and custom-designed programs created many challenges in fulfilling their prizes including:
- Storage and distribution of uniquely-sized and shaped items
- A wide variety in size and scale of these projects
- Difficulty with production and coordination of intricate programs involving printed literature, product samples, and other unique items
- Inefficient and expensive shipping methods due to poorly managed programs
Since HelloWorld was a fledgling company with four employees, Gilson has been a primary partner, managing increasingly larger and more sophisticated programs as the company has grown to more than 400 employees.
Gilson’s Solution
Our services to HelloWorldinclude:
- We’ve set up more than 20 PO Boxes to receive sweepstakes entries and – because HelloWorld conducts 40-60 ongoing promotions at any one time – we sort thousands of pieces of mail each day.
- We inspect and review all entries for compliance with contest rules, which may include the submission of photos, essays, videos and other materials.
- We coordinate with third parties to receive premium items – iPods, plasma televisions, beach towels, umbrellas, golf clubs, car tires and much more – and inventory them for timely fulfillment.
- We provide turnkey solutions for rebate campaigns – from printing and distributing the initial coupon offers, opening and maintaining bank accounts to fulfilling the printing and reconciling of checks.
- Using Mindwire® technology, we built a web portal giving HelloWorld real-time views of inventory status for all promotion items. Mindwire can also track shipments and confirm deliveries.
- Mindwire is also the tool used to capture customer information from entries and transmit data to ePrize for dissemination to HelloWorld clients.
The Results
As a strategic partner, we’ve increased our warehouse packaging and distribution space from 25,000 sq. ft. to more than 150,000 sq. ft. Our investment in fulfillment infrastructure has allowed HelloWorld to focus on its core business – selling and designing promotions.
Josh Linker, founder and Chief Executive Officer, says Gilson has played an integral part in his company’s success: “We couldn’t have grown so quickly without the help of Gilson!”
