Vancouver’s Hot Tomali has launched a new style of reward program to encourage sales associates at major retailers to learn about the products they sell.
Manufacturers such as Electronic Arts Inc. (EA) (Nasdaq:EA) pay to develop training materials that sales associates then study and take quizzes to demonstrate knowledge via Hot Tomali’s Cheddar Labs.
“When somebody conducts a quiz, we give them points that have a monetary value,” explained Hot Tomali founder and creative director Thomas Stringham.
“All the material they need to do well on the quiz is on the CheddarLabs website. If there’s 1,000 points available to do a quiz and they get 75%, they get 750 points that they can then redeem for merchandise.”
Hot Tomali originally developed a reward program exclusively with EA, which was called EA Retail Professionals. EA wanted to reduce its cost to operate the program so Hot Tomali sought to create its own platform and include other manufacturing companies to spread the cost around, Stringham told Business in Vancouver.
So far, 10,000 retail sales associates have joined the community because they were involved when the product was in a beta phase.
