Curt Carlson, who founded a $20 billion business (Radisson hotels, TGI Fridays) on his Gold Bond stamp company during the Depression, is peddling them again, this time as a salve for harried shoppers and small businesses pummeled by superstores. The 84-year-old billionaire recently rolled out Gold Points Plus in Minneapolis and St. Paul and plans to have them in the top 50 markets by the millennium. His company claims that more than 800,000 Twin Citians (nearly half the area’s households) have collected points on his credit-card-size pieces of plastic, from more than 500 retail partners. Last month MCI became a national partner.
Shoppers swipe the card at grocery- and drugstore cash registers, earning one point for every five cents spent. A baseball glove costs 12,400 points; a 32-inch TV puts you back 539,000. What’s in it for Carlson? He sells retailers the hardware and software, then hawks demographic shopping data to marketers. (Carlson says he won’t sell info about individuals’ buying patterns.) For retailers, the lure is more customers. With coupons losing popularity and ““loyalty cards’’ offering only a free CD or cup of coffee, Carlson’s cards are supposed to tempt bargain hunters. Says George Rosenbaum, head of Leo J. Shapiro & Associates, a Chicago-based market-research firm, ““This is an artifact of retailing that is going to be in everybody’s pocketbook and wallet.''
Darwin Lay, a suburban-Minneapolis groundskeeper who has racked up 161,000 points (halfway to a camcorder), is with the program. ““You’ve got to buy groceries anyway,’’ he says. ““Why not get something in return?’’ Just don’t lick the card.
