News

 

Retailers are well aware that good lighting is critical to visually rendering and calling attention to merchandise, including the role of color rendering. Light is made up of colors. For us to see an object as blue, that color must be present in the object and the light itself.

Most electric white-light sources don’t produce light with a balanced color spectrum, however. They’re manufactured with varying relative intensities of colors. This choice provides control of color appearance of the light source and how objects in the space appear.

 

A new specialty grocer — Fresh Thyme Farmers Market — has big plans for the Midwest. With industry veteran Chris Sherrell at the helm (and an investment interest from Meijer Inc.), the start-up emphasizes natural and organic foods and produce, much of it locally sourced, at value prices in a convenient neighborhood-store format.

 

By Lyle Bunn

 

Increasingly, more and more stores are utilizing flat-panel screens for digital messaging and customer engagement. Such initiatives are being advanced by a wide range of departments, from marketing to technology.  And they are referred to by a variety of names, including digital place-based media, retail media, dynamic signage, location-based digital display and enterprise media (the term digital signage is a bit dated.)   

 

By Paul Rauker

 

 

In a move to streamline operations at its 700-plus locations, Smoothie King Franchises Inc. is rolling out Revel Systems’ iPad POS solution across its entire store network. The company said it selected the Revel platform for its scalability, speed and user-friendly technology.

 

Reliability and customer comfort are just two of the advantages casual dining chain Hooters of America receives from its POS environment, which is based on traditional fixed POS terminals. The Atlanta-based chain, which operates 190 corporate stores as well as 12 franchised locations where it supports POS operations, has been using POS hardware from Posiflex Business Machines since 2006.

Armonk, N.Y. –- IBM projects a strong holiday shopping season with online sales projected to increase 15% during the five-day period between Thanksgiving and Cyber Monday. The biggest increase in online sales is expected on Cyber Monday, predicted to grow 15.8%, followed closely by Thanksgiving with a projected increase of 15.6%.   

 

Kentucky Fried Chicken franchisee Weaver Enterprises Ltd. is using Toshiba SurePOS 500 POS hardware and software, including touchscreen terminals, to meet corporate software standards and improve the checkout experience. Working with business partner Tolt Solutions, Weaver selected Toshiba’s SurePOS 500 and SureMark printer as the core of the new POS solution.

Using the Toshiba SurePOS 500’s spill-resistant, infrared touchscreen terminal and running Compris POS software, Weaver has increased employee productivity and reduced customer wait time.

Seattle –- Online retailer Zulily Inc. shrank its net loss to $795 million in the third quarter of fiscal 2014 from $2.25 billion the same period the prior year. Net sales shot up 72% to $285.8 million.  

 

With a promotional website, a Pinterest page and two stores, specialty crafts retailer Porter’s Craft & Frame is a small company supporting some big plans with a new tablet-based POS platform from Springboard Retail.

“Until recently, we used a PC-based POS system and used tablets to record information on products we bought at trade shows,” said Alex Nielsen, general manager of Porter’s, Rexburg, Idaho. “We had some laptops on carts in stores.”