POS Producer Builds In-House Shopping Mall

What is claimed to be a first in the Point Of Sale industry has come to light following the Printingtalk weekly email newsletter's challenge to hear of innovative angles on creating business success.

What is claimed to be a first in the Point Of Sale (POS) industry has come to light following the Printingtalk weekly email newsletter's challenge to hear of innovative angles on creating business success.

The Terry Smith Group is a UK manufacturer of temporary POS, predominately in the retail and FMCG sectors.

The company's head of communications, Andrew Hinton, wrote to Printingtalk to tell us about the company's in-house virtual shopping mall, constructed in the company's West Drayton, Middlesex headquarters.

The shopping mall is complete with fixtures, fittings and live stock and it provides the ability to have interchangeable graphics to service a variety of clients in accurately visualising retail POS designs in a representative physical environment, said Andrew Hinton.

He commented: "It has proven very popular, not only with or existing clients but interestingly, as a point of difference and talking point for prospective new clients.

We now even hold our internal creative meetings within the virtual stores within the mall.

The mall is the result of a period of market review undertaken by the company as it examined new ways to maintain its competitive edge and reputation for innovation.

The company said that it discussed with its clients their requirements going forward in detail in the form of 'blue-sky' thinking.

The company's service has consequently expanded its service portfolio in a number of directions.

As Andrew Hinton pointed out, clients indicated that potential POS displays, not seen in situ, are often hard to imagine or to understand in terms of how they will fit in to the wider store environment.

He added: "In essence, we consider the context of the message and the overall brand guidelines of the store, without it either getting lost in to the background or competing with the existing permanent features, or product." Following a review process on how to best resolve that dilemma effectively, Terry Smith looked at a variety of possible solutions including animations of virtual stores but the company felt they would be too time consuming.

At the same time, two dimensional visualisation were too far from what the company wanted to achieve.

Alternatively, fitting out an individual store prior to roll-out was considered but it was felt that it was not practical without affecting sales.

As a result the only practical solution that achieved what Terry Smith's clients really needed and at the level the company wanted to provide, was to build its in-house shopping mall.

The company has constructed five stores, each with their own default fittings to represent a supermarket, lingerie store, wine merchant, a video, or games store and a fashion retailer.

All stores include racking and gondola shelving and are live stocked with the product type to be found in-store.

With the supermarket, video store and wine merchant, Terry Smith used FMCG brand names, so that the company 'stock' the store with a client's or prospect's own brands and insert them amongst the on-shelf goods to create the desired effect very quickly.

The company said that fashion store is more difficult as it would be inappropriate to display any single retailer's product as they all carry labels.

In that instance, where practical Terry Smith said that it contacts the retailer beforehand to request that it either temporarily supplies some stock, or with some existing clients the company already holds a variety of seasonal stock that can be rotated.

The stores are inter-linked internally, so any visitor does not need to go back out and in of all stores, should they wish to see other work that is on display at the time.

Only POS that is in-store on the High Street is displayed in the 'virtual' stores to ensure no confidentialities are broken, added the company.

External signage is removable, so that any particular client can have a branded site within a few minutes, it is claimed.

All graphic elements can be produced on site as part of the company's noraml activities and if a retailer is not one of the types whose shops are already simulated, Terry Smith said that it is relatively easy to change the product type and fit the store to different specifications.

When not in use, the area is used to showcase a range of the company's work and examples of POS that is removed and stored when the area is required by any individual client.

To compliment the area, Terry Smith has now installed a second AV suite with full audio visual presentation facilities for larger meetings or presentations.

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