Steady As She Goes

While AmeriMark began to test the waters of proprietary credit back in 2000, it wasn’t until 2004 that the company rolled out the program in its entirety. Giesler notes that great care initially was taken to determine what the bad debt rates would be among AmeriMark’s customer base.

He recommends that other companies interested in starting a credit program take at least one year to 18 months to test the program and weigh its pros and cons, that is, lifetime value increase versus bad debts.