Catalina Marketing

2335 Words5 Pages

History

Catalina Marketing Corporation was founded in 1983 by five friends, Tom Mindrum, Mike O’Brien, George Off, Mike Scroggie and Brian Yeatman, while on a boating trip to Catalina Island in Southern California. The five friends were remarkably similar, though different. All five had experience in the consumer research field. All five had strong areas (whether research, computer technology or sales) at which they excelled. All five were looking for a new line of work that would be challenging and most importantly, paid well. The five came up with an idea to use the new scanner technology at grocery stores to gather information and print a coupon for a rival product.
The five friends knew it would not be easy to found their own business. They unanimously decided to name Mike O’Brien as their first Chief Executive Officer (CEO) due to the fact that he was the only one in the group who was not currently employed and could dedicate the most time to the project. O’Brien was also the most out-going and the best salesperson in the group with the best business connections. All knew they could trust O’Brien to keep all their interest at hand. All five contributed $40,000 (for a total initial investment of $200,000) in order to set up the company. George Off and Mike Scroggie worked together to come up with a software that could collect and analyze the information to print coupons based upon the Universal Product Code (UPC) bar code. The idea was to come up with a means of modifying the only programmable POS (point of sale) system of the day, an IBM 3650, to print coupons once given a cue. A small family run chain in Rochester, New York (Wegmans) gave Catalina permission to test it’s “Coupon Solution” in their stores. The son of the owner, Danny Wegman, signed the contract for this test pilot.
O’Brien got to work in using his extensive contacts to find clients to sign up for a test of the scanner-coupon idea. He signed eight clients (Coca-Cola, Coke Foods, General Mills, L’EGGS, Tropicana, Ralston Purina, Kraft and Hills Bros. Coffee, and Procter & Gamble) to make initial investments of $30,000 each for a total of $240,000.
The Coupon Solution test program finally began in early 1984. The early coupons were printed on the backs of the register tape by the stores existing dot-matrix printers. George Off would often travel to Rochester to make sure the program was running smoothly.

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