Resellers can win a Porsche

Printer and copier vendor Kyocera has bought a red Porsche Boxster as a prize for resellers who achieve the highest aggregate sales for the vendor overall in a channel initiative spanning the next two years.

David Finn, managing director at Kyocera Australia, said resellers who signed up for its new authorised reseller program could win the brand new 2005 Porsche Boxster 987, which he was collecting from Porsche Australia in Melbourne in a couple of weeks.

The incentive program would run for eight months, with individual staff -- signed up to the program and assigned a Kyocera MasterCard debit card -- eligible to win the keys to the car for a month each, he said.

"The channel hasn't had much fun lately," Finn said. "If this works, it works well. If it fails, it fails spectacularly."

The top reseller for the year would get the car for 12 months, and if he or she stayed on top two years' running, he or she won the car outright, Finn said.

Between each winner, the car would be groomed and restored to showroom condition before being transported at Kyocera's cost to the next winner.

Runners-up would win advanced driver training days -- complete with race-prepped Porsche -- at Mount Cotton in Queensland. Others would win Porsche sunglasses, Finn said.

Kyocera would wear the entire risk of the Porsche promotion, using insurance from its corporate specialist insurer Tokyo Marine. Resellers that won would have to sign a waiver and agree to pay a $1500 excess if the car was damaged or stolen.

Without the GPS tracking device that has been installed, the excess would have been $5000, Finn said.

Kyocera had paid Porsche Australia for the $150,000 car and would cover on-road costs for the winners, including fuel and registration in the winners' home state, he said.

"All they've got to do is keep their licence," Finn said.

The German car maker's FA Porsche facility also designed certain Kyocera equipment, he said, but the idea for the incentive program had come from a Porsche day he had attended.

"Kyocera [in Japan] looked at me as if I was from Mars," he said.

The new authorised reseller program would also be supplemented with the Kyocera KyoCard cash bonus program, special pricing, sales and marketing tools and three new products.