Integrity, honesty, respect, and responsibility.
That might sound like the motto of a service organization or a volunteer group. But for Global Promotional Sourcing, a full-service casino marketing partner, the words are a way of doing business.
“I’d say that’s part of the reason we lasted 25 years,” says Steve Raucher, the company’s founder. “Lots of companies try to take shortcuts, cheat, or do things that aren’t quite right, and that shows up. Customers know it, and it’s just a matter of time before that doesn’t go in the right direction.”
Steve and his son, Zack Raucher, now CEO, built GPS-based on those principles. But the secret to the company’s success is not telling a casino what they need but listening to what they want.
“A lot of companies do this because they have something they want to sell, so to speak, and align with the customer needs,” Steve Raucher says. “And I think I just had the ability to kind of walk up and down a trade show floor, know my customers well enough that that’s the right fit for their brand.”
“It’s a process that we go through has to do with doing our market research,” Steve Raucher adds. “What’s trending? We travel the whole world to figure that out. … Because what a consumer wants is what’s going to make a good gift.”
GPS delivers an array of gifts that are a step beyond typical giveaways, ranging from fashionable handbags to designer sunglasses. Gifts can be whimsical – the company gave away yo-yos at this year’s Global Gaming Expo. One of the most popular items is hard-sided luggage.
“That’s something that you go buy off the shelf, it’s $100, and you’re getting it as a gift,” says Zack Raucher. “That’s something that always drives people.”
GPS also produces shopping events that feature items ranging from cookware to electronics. Players earn points to redeem brand-name gift items that are displayed like a boutique store.
The company’s ezGIFT program is a gifting experience that offers a selection of gifts from which guests can choose one that they want.
The company has evolved in myriad ways since Zack Raucher joined in 2019. COVID was a hurdle the company had to overcome. It also made him realize GPS needed better tools.
“The way Dad always kind of refers to it is, our job is to take a whole bunch of jumbled information and turn it into something that makes sense and can be sold,” Zack Raucher says. “We work with vendors all over, factory direct in China, all the way down to people who sell home goods. They give us information, and sometimes it’s missing images.”
Sensing a void, the younger Raucher helped develop Passport, which consolidates all product information from all various suppliers and distributors into one place. It standardizes data and allows quick generation of presentations and the build of gifting websites in one tool.
“Customers are used to shopping on their own,” Zack Raucher says, “and so just having a singular place for customers to go ‘I like this, this, and this’ versus us going, ‘do you like this or this?,’ that’s just a time saver for everyone.”
The other tool GPS has in its quiver is canine assistance. Delilah, chief scratchetist, Adrian, chief pawpetrating officer, and Miley, chief barketing officer, are among the many dogs that populate GPS office.
“Zack kind of innovated making the dogs into our marketing as part of who we are as an organization and a family,” Steve Raucher says. “We put out a calendar of all the company dogs, and we do allow one month for cats. But it just became our brand in the industry. We put videos out with the dogs and all kinds of fun things, and it’s funny how it’s a conversation starter when you go to visit clients.”
Twenty-five years in, the Rauchers see the next chapter as less about any single gift and more about the systems behind it. Those include an on-site redemption kiosk where players scan their loyalty card and pick a gift, product data that improves with every client presentation, and order dashboards clients can already see, with live tracking on Zack’s wish list.
Add GPS’ growing lineup of in-house brands and licensed lines, and the company’s bet is simple: give casino marketers better tools, and the right gift follows.
“We’re just trying to be as vertical and hitting as many of those different channels as we possibly can to reach the casino player wherever they are, whether it’s on site, or online,” Zack Raucher said.
