Meet Gregg Gottschling

Instant gift certificate customized to reflect the look and feel of www.giftsanddec.com

Got a brick and mortar store and a website? Want to sell gift cards online? TheGiftCardCafe.com will do it for you with no upfront investment.

Gregg Gottschling is co-founder of TheGiftCardCafe.com based in Wilmington, DE. His company started out developing custom software solutions in 1999 – in Internet years, that’s forever. But three years ago things changed.

Says Gregg, “We realized after building a customized solution for one of our spas that costs $2,000-$3,000 that it was very difficult for them to recoup their original investment, so if we could offer a shared platform to thousands of customers…” And thus a new business model was born.

How it works is, retailers fill out an application and provided they have a physical store location, are usually approved in about an hour. They then set up their account to offer instant (email) gift certificates only, physical gift cards, or both. Consumers who click the link on the retailers’ site switch over to The GiftCardCafe.com but keep the look and feel of the retailer’s web presence. Consumers choose their amount (a minimum of $25) and pay, and TheGiftCardCafe.com takes 8 percent off the top – including merchant credit card fees. The rest is direct deposited to the retailer’s bank account twice a month.

For instant gift certificates, automated emails go out, well, instantly. For physical gift cards, an email is sent to the retailer telling them to mail the card. A monthly fee version is also available for high volume retailers, and only the latter is offered in Canada. (Pay per order is US only.) Other features such as discounting, packages and multiple locations are available.

TheGiftCardCafe.com launched “about two Novembers ago” and has about 500 customers so far, mostly the spas and salons who were Gottschling’s initial customer base as well as restaurants, and now is reaching out to retailers.

Gregg estimates that most retailers would probably do between $500 and $700 a month in gift certificate sales, but there are no guarantees. “We provide a platform, they have to promote it,” he says. But what have you got to lose? “If they don’t have any orders,” Gottschling says, “they don’t have to pay a dime.”