In what looks like a shrewd move, Brookstone is saying it will offer a discount to consumers who bring a Sharper Image gift card into any of its stores and relinquish it to a store associate. Sharper Image said last week that it would no longer redeem gift cards that had already been issued after announcing it had filed for bankruptcy.
Brookstone is offering an instant 25% savings on purchases of many items it carries, regardless of the value of the gift card, gift certificate or merchandise certificate. The offer isn’t valid for Sony, Celestron, Bose, Panasonic and Tempur-Pedic products.
For the sheer good will alone that this will generate with Sharper Image customers, the move sounds like a good one. Plus, with the rising cost of new customer acquisitions, this looks like a smart way for Brookstone to invest some of that money into acquiring consumers it already knows are interested in products similar to what it carries.
–Chantal Todé
