There’s no way around it. American consumers love gift cards. Whether you’re giving or receiving this holiday season, odds are a gift card or two will change hands. And don’t think this will change once January rolls around either – an ever-growing number of individual consumers and corporate entities are going the gift card route year-round. In 2007, U.S. consumers purchased an estimated $97 billion in gift cards, up from $83 billion in 2006. Worldwide, the prepaid industry as a whole rakes in approximately $218.3 billion each year.

Local gift card and prepaid card pioneer, Omni Prepaid LLC, is making some considerable waves in this rapidly expanding global industry by bringing the majority of its operations under one roof. With the official opening on its Green Tree-based fulfillment center this past September, Omni Prepaid, the parent company to GiftCards.com, became the first and only gift card company to print their own customized Visa® gift cards, merchant cards and marketing inserts in-house.

Known as OmniPrint, the Visa Certified 20,000-sq.-ft. fulfillment center brings a whole new meaning to GiftCards.com’s “on-demand gift card solutions.” “By bringing everything under one roof, we can turn around our customers’ gift card orders on demand instead of waiting weeks,” Jason Wolfe, the CEO and Founder of Omni Prepaid, said. “It allows us to be more flexible with customization of four-color thermaled on-demand prepaid Visa gift cards and merchant cards. It puts the control and on-demand customization into our customers’ hands.”

GiftCards.com, which currently caters to individual consumers and more than 5,000 corporate clients, puts end-to-end gift card creation at the fingertips of its customers with a suite of tools cut from the same mold as OmniPrint. Just three weeks after officially rolling the presses at its in-house printing facility, Omni Prepaid released its on-demand, gift card personalization tool, OmniBuild. With OmniBuild, customers can upload a personal photo, company logo or embossed message and design a customized gift card while placing an order on GiftCards.com.

Additionally, OmniBuild enhances Omni Prepaid’s traction in the burgeoning corporate gifts industry. With more and more companies turning to gift cards to motivate employees through corporate incentive programs, gift card personalization is an attractive feature. “OmniBuild was created in response to our customer’s requests,” Wolfe asserted. “Prepaid gift cards are such a popular gift, but our customers have been asking for a way to make them more personal and unique.”

Not only is Omni Prepaid offering its OmniBuild application to customers using GiftCards.com, the company is now selling the card-building application to retailers and restaurants for use on their own sites. This is in keeping with the company’s new strategic focus. Going forward, Wolfe wants to grow Omni Prepaid not just by selling gift cards, but through developing and licensing the backend technology that powers GiftCards.com.

“In 2007, I decided to start Omni Prepaid, LLC to focus on building GiftCards.com from a small, five-person Internet company into a technology firm with a focus on developing technology to license it into the prepaid marketplace,” Wolfe said. “To accomplish this, we began eliminating vendors by bringing specific operations in-house. To support this strategic shift, we have brought on several key executives to oversee the different facets of Omni Prepaid. Combined Omni Prepaid and GiftCards.com has grown from five to 54 employees, all here in Pittsburgh.”

From the structured and methodical build-out approach Wolfe is taking with Omni Prepaid, it’s not surprising that he has considerable experience starting and growing online businesses. Since Wolfe started his first on-line business in 1994, then called Advertising Concepts, Inc., he has built and sold multiple on-line marketing companies, including Direct Response Technologies, Inc. and MyCoupons.com. Wolfe started GiftCards.com as a division of Direct Response Technologies in 1999 and then transferred it under Omni Prepaid when he sold Direct Response to e-commerce outsourcing company, Digital River (NASDAQ: DRIV) in January 2006.

With the consolidation of Omni Prepaid’s operational entities almost complete, the future looks very bright for this promising local tech company. As gift cards become more and more ubiquitous, there is no doubt that Omni Prepaid’s diversified market position and growing client base will fuel its strong growth and surging industry presence.■