Alex and Ani expanding partnership with TCMPi

RIGHT CHOICE: TCMPi debuted a new Choice Events, a corporate-event, gift-giving concept, featuring lifestyle brand Alex and Ani, at the Promotional Products Association International Expo 2013 in Las Vegas in January. / COURTESY DON LUTKUS
RIGHT CHOICE: TCMPi debuted a new Choice Events, a corporate-event, gift-giving concept, featuring lifestyle brand Alex and Ani, at the Promotional Products Association International Expo 2013 in Las Vegas in January. / COURTESY DON LUTKUS

Cranston-based jewelry company Alex and Ani and a Providence-based supplier of brand-name items for loyalty programs recently announced an expansion of a partnership that’s relatively rare among local businesses.
The Corporate Marketplace Inc. has been offering Alex and Ani products to clients since 2011. The partnership kicked up a notch recently when TCMPi announced it now is offering Alex and Ani as a Choice Event program product.
Choice Events, which TCMPi began in early 2011, combine reward programs with a sort of shopping experience.
In the program, that so far has focused on accessory brands Ray-Ban and Oakley sunglasses and Tommy Bahama watches, corporate guests are able to try on and select their gift from a product assortment, instead of being given a bag with pre-selected gifts at such events as client or board-of-director retreats.
“There is an aspect of ‘I can try it on, look in the mirror,’ ” said Tom Stearns, director of marketing for TCMPi. “It was an experiment and we’ve had very steady growth so we continue to expand it. We ironed out all the kinks and got very, very good at this.”
Moving to offer Alex and Ani bangles was seen as the next natural experiment for both companies that also presented an opportunity to further their relationship, which Alex and Ani largely entered into based on TCMPi’s Rhode Island connection.
Alex and Ani in the last year has moved to nationalize its brand built on the “power of positive energy” concept tied into its trademark bangles. The company recently has focused on diversifying by opening its Teas and Javas coffee shops, the Alex and Ani University, and the purchase of Sakonnet Vineyards in Little Compton as part of a “main street” approach to reinvesting in Rhode Island. Giovanni Feroce, Alex and Ani CEO, said he had heard of TCMPi and had a feeling there would be a good connection with a local business that would also help his company grow its brand.
“Getting involved with them was due to their reputation. But the thing about TCMPi is that they are local,” Feroce said. “It was a good thing for us to get together, as fellow Rhode Island companies, to kind of be prosperous together and help each other.”
It’s the kind of cooperation that in Rhode Island’s business community, where the idea that a small state is a breeding ground for small-business cross-promoting, he says needs to happen even more if the state is to recover from its economic slump, by advancing a locally manufactured product to clients across the country.
Such partnerships among local companies aren’t as common as they should be, agrees Joel Cooper, a business professor and director of the Business Support Center at Roger Williams University.
“To partner locally has not taken hold as much as we’d like people to do – it’s pretty innovative and unique,” he said. “In many ways, in the long haul, it is much more cost-effective to do something locally. Not to mention it’s just good, corporate, social consciousness to do so. Alex and Ani already is renowned for doing all of that.”
Cooper also pointed out the day-to-day benefits of doing business locally, including being able to resolve shipping, distribution, delivery and other possible issues in person and quickly.
“It’s a perfect solution to have things nearby,” Cooper said. “We’ve kind of gone full circle, all the way from 100 years ago when everything was local to moving everything overseas, to seeing the sense in coming right back home.” Alex and Ani Choice Events will allow corporate guests to choose up to four bangles from a selection of up to 12. Events feature a product expert from TCMPi. Feroce said Alex and Ani will provide staff training on how to present the brand products.
The partnership was introduced last month at the Promotional Products Association International Expo in Las Vegas.
TCMPi acknowledged that an Alex and Ani Choice Event will have a distinct market in that a program would have to be heavily attended by women in order to work with the brand.
“It’s absolutely an opportunity for us to make ourselves more of a national brand and in this case, it’s the quality of the partnership,” said Feroce. “It’s an opportunity for Alex and Ani to be linked to the term ‘reward.’ You’re saying ‘thank you’ and your generosity is now tied into and associated with Alex and Ani. That’s a place we would love to be.”
The Choice Events division of TCMPi, Stearns said, is growing steadily. Not every TCMPi-offered product would work for an event, he said, but the company is interested in continuing to expand what it does offer through that channel.
“Say you are being recognized by [your company] and they give you a luxury watch brand,” Stearns said. “Every time you wear it, you’re showing off the trophy value [of the watch]. You look at the company that gave it to you and you remember they recognized you.
“There are all these layers of meaning associated with the product,” he continued. “When it’s a brand-name product, it has its own value associated with it. We’re a pretty big player in the space that we play in.” •

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