Published April 2001

RTA puts companies’ ads into consumers’ hands

By Kimberly Hilden
Herald Business Journal Assistant Editor

If you’ve been to the grocery store, you’ve probably seen Register Tape Advertising Inc. in action.

Based in Everett, RTA is behind many of those ads you get along with your grocery receipts. You know — the “dollar off” a sub sandwich or the 25 percent discount on a haircut at a nearby salon to go along with your milk, eggs and sundries.

“It’s the type of advertising that really works,” Janice Henning, a principal of the company, said about the tape, which RTA sends out in three-month batches to stores it contracts with, including QFC, Albertson’s and Top Foods, among others.

“For at least three months, the customer is having their name out there continuously all day, 24 hours a day, seven days a week. And their ad, on average, goes out 1,000 times a day,” said Tracy Hansen, RTA’s Director of Marketing.

RTA, which contracts with stores in Washington, Oregon, Idaho and Montana, has about 2,000 customers advertising their wares in grocery stores, Henning said. The company encourages its customers to track their advertising success by keeping the ads customers bring in and counting them each quarter.

And those customers keep coming back, she said, helping RTA maintain a 65 percent to 70 percent customer renewal rate. Last year alone, the company, which employs 17, generated $2.6 million in sales.

“We have some customers who have been on the tape since we began,” said Henning, who started the business with her husband, Lloyd, in 1988.

RTA’s rolls of tape, which are printed and distributed by Henning’s other business, Everett-based Puget Press, include 10 advertisers per roll whose ads are repeated. The rolls are tailor-made to match a store’s location with advertisers, so they are within a few miles of each other.

RTA customers also benefit from the strength of the grocery stores in which they advertise, Operations Manager Kent Hendricks said.

“A grocery store’s spent so many thousands of dollars marketing their own products and services and getting people to come to their stores, these little businesses can just tie into that marketing,” he said.

Grocery stores benefit from the tape, too, Hansen said.

Along with getting a free advertising space on the register tape, grocery stores are offering a discount to their customers.

“Plus, it shows that the stores are supporting their community, because it’s businesses in their community that are on the receipt tape,” Hansen said.

Ad rates vary from about $153 a month to about $237 a month, depending on a store’s customer traffic and the amount of tape used. For instance, advertising in a QFC in Seattle is going to cost an advertiser a little more than advertising in a grocery store in a small Idaho town, Hansen said.

RTA’s tape is in about 350 stores, Hendricks said, and thanks to a recent deal with Albertson’s, the company plans to be in 400 stores by fall.

“We just negotiated a contract with their corporate office in Boise to do all their stores in the Northwest,” he said.

But he’s quick to add that the Northwest is as big as RTA wants to get, having seen others in the industry stretch beyond their abilities, try to go national and end up out of business.

At this size, “we’re able to meet the standards that we set,” Hansen said.

“And we have very high standards,” Henning added.

For more information on RTA, call 425-339-3710 or 800-578-5778, or visit the company’s Web site at www.registertape.com.

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