Buying Club Offers Asians Phone Link to Firms
A new telephone buying club launching a novel effort to reach this nation’s Asian community was unveiled in Los Angeles on Thursday.
The club, known as 777-CLUB, allows its members to order cakes, gifts and airline tickets over a toll-free phone number, all at a 5% discount. Long-distance telephone calls, which Asian residents often make to relatives overseas, are also less expensive through the club, through a special agreement with MCI Telecommunications Corp.
The club is a service offered by the Asian Business Connection, a Los Angeles-based business headed by Marty Shih.
With the 777-CLUB network, multilingual operators connect members with various companies and will stay on the line to help translate for members who do not speak English, said Shih. The club offers translation help in Mandarin and Cantonese Chinese, Japanese, Korean and Vietnamese, said Shih, who hopes to expand the service to non-Asian groups.
For the eight companies already affiliated with the program--including Best Products Co., TeleCake, Dial-a-Gift and Star Tours--the company’s 777-CLUB is a way to crack the growing Asian market.
“We wanted to do something to get closer to the local community,” said James Kramer, sales director for MCI’s Pacific division. “We want to be an identified player in the community. That’s what we are trying to do here with Asian Business Connection.”
Kramer said 777-CLUB marks MCI’s first attempt to reach an ethnic market through a marketing club. If the venture succeeds, MCI may use it to reach other minority communities, he said.
MCI, he said, also sees 777-CLUB members as a way of gaining an edge over its major rivals, American Telephone & Telegraph and US Sprint, in the hotly competitive battle for long-distance customers.
Asian Business Connection, which has branch offices in Alhambra and Santa Ana, has already signed up 800 members, including businesses and individuals. Members pay a one-time fee--$25 for companies and $15 for individuals--entitling them to the club’s discount goods and services.
The company also earns commissions from firms affiliated with the service.
Shih, a Taiwanese immigrant, got the idea for 777-CLUB from the Los Angeles flower business he and his sister started 10 years ago. By developing a telephone ordering service, the two turned a tiny flower stand on Olive Street into a successful business that arranges flower deliveries nationwide.
Establishing a telephone ordering network for his flower company doubled business overnight, Shih said. So he decided to apply the same idea in other business ventures. Shih is negotiating with Domino’s Pizza, hoping to add piping-hot pizzas to the list of foods members can have delivered.
