 |
|
|
 Business News | June 2006 
Best Mexico Links Nations, Sets Standard
 Mary Lou Pickel - Palm Beach Post-Cox
| | Wise plans to continue the momentum of brand recognition of the Best Mexico card by marketing financial services for immigrants who conduct business in cash. |
Viscom International ignored the rules and put all its eggs in one basket.
Founder John Wise built his company on selling one telephone card for calling one country: Mexico.
He stuck to the game plan for six years, and now Atlanta-based Viscom brings in $14 million a year.
It's still a David in the prepaid long-distance business compared with Newark, N.J.-based IDT, a Goliath with reported revenue of $2.47 billion last year.
But Viscom has created a recognizable brand with its Best Mexico card.
The company says its revenue has grown 68 percent since 2004, due in large part to its expansion into 30 markets in the Southeast and particularly in North Carolina, where the Hispanic population is estimated at more than 506,000 and majority-Mexican.
"Our sales hockey-sticked," said Christina Steiner, Viscom's vice president of marketing. The company faces competition from dozens of companies that often sell cards advertising more minutes.
At La Mexicana grocery store in Mableton, Ga., near Atlanta, hundreds of colorful cards hang on the wall behind the cash register. They have catchy names like Girl Talk, Que Pasa and Viva Futbol. Some are shaped like cartoon gladiators. Few keep the same name and look for long.
Wise's Best Mexico card is more understated, and he likes it that way.
Viscom wants to sell a steady-as-she-goes card that may not deliver the most minutes but will deliver the number of minutes promised at the beginning of each call and will keep fees reasonable.
Viscom sells more than 350,000 Best Mexico calling cards per month at 7,700 retail outlets, mostly in $5 denominations. The company processed more than 1 million calls from the United States to Mexico last month.
A map in Viscom's northwest Atlanta office indicates its growth plan: Salt Lake City, Kansas City and Yakima, Wash.
The company also is planning in the next six weeks to expand its brand with a new card, Best Centro, for calls to Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador.
Building a brand is a maverick strategy in the $5 billion to $7 billion prepaid international long-distance industry.
The common wisdom is that customers have no brand loyalty and will always go with the lowest price.
The industry is rife with cards that promise a huge number of minutes, even though there's no way a company can honor such claims and remain profitable.
"People like to call that a marketing scheme," said Laurette Veres, publisher of Intele-CardNews, an industry publication based in Houston. "Where we run into issues is how well are we communicating the scheme."
Many companies follow this scenario: A card hooks a customer by advertising lots of minutes, but sooner or later the low introductory rate jumps to something more profitable. The company also makes money through unspecified taxes, disconnection fees or maintenance fees, or simply by dropping a call in the middle of a conversation. The customer feels cheated and buys a different card next time. But before long, the same company comes out with a new brand and the cycle begins again.
Fine print on cards and posters outlines some fees, but detailed rate schedules are not fully disclosed.
Why do many companies abuse the customer this way?
"Because they can," said Viscom founder Wise, noting there's a lack of monitoring of compliance with federal and state regulations.
The effort to build a brand seems to be working.
Casimiro Arce, 40, debated which card to buy at Plaza Fiesta in DeKalb County, Ga., to call his wife and kids in Guerrero, Mexico. He settled on a Best Mexico card because of past experience.
"The last time I used it, they didn't shave off even one minute," Arce said. "The others, when you use it, the next day it's no good."
At La Mexicana in Mableton, the card has steady sales.
"It's been one of the top-five sellers for the past four or five years," said Emerson Fernandez, owner of the grocery, which sells hundreds of cards per week. "That's very unusual."
Wise, 42, has a grass-roots knowledge of his customers and Mexican culture. He studied a year abroad at the University of Guadalajara before earning a degree in economics and Spanish from Guilford College in North Carolina.
"I like these guys," Wise said of Mexican immigrants. "I hitchhiked 3,000 miles in Mexico and rode on the bus with these guys."
Wise first sold prepaid long-distance service to the Hispanic market in Atlanta in 1995 when he created a joint venture that later was bought by Pointecom, a telecom company that no longer exists. Wise managed Pointecom's prepaid phone card business — which did not focus on the Hispanic market — for a few years, and then struck out on his own in 2000.
Wise plans to continue the momentum of brand recognition of the Best Mexico card by marketing financial services for immigrants who conduct business in cash. |
| |
|
Vallarta Weddings
Tell a Friend
Site Map
Print this Page
Email Us