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Press release

06.02.2013

Crafting A New Revolution
North Yorkshire based craft shop, ‘Handmade by Emma’, has adopted the V-R100 AndroidTM EPoS terminal from Casio Electronics running AirPOS, the world changing POS solution from the Belfast-based startup.

Over the past 10 years, the term 'handmade' has moved beyond scrapbooking and sewing, into a new wave of indie craft. A movement that created a burgeoning marketplace for craft collectives and a marketplace that provided small artists a place to showcase and sell unique handcrafted goods. Fast forward to 2013, and even though we're still feeling the effects of a global recession, there's an increasing amount of interest in quality, handcrafted items resulting in many handmade businesses springing up throughout the UK.

One such business is Handmade by Emma. Based in North Yorkshire. This is a new startup craft shop founded by Emma Conway, a mum of four who has a passion for all things handmade. From colorful teacups to customised cushions, decorative doorstops to delectable draught excluders, Emma's mission is to bring locally, handmade goods back into the high street. A mission that Casio, one of the world’s largest hardware manufactures, are right behind. Guy Boxall, Senior Product Marketing Manager at Casio believes that “small, independent businesses are the lifeblood of any community and the UK economy and we are committed to working with businesses to help local high streets fight back”

To help do this, Casio are changing the way in which retailers like Emma serve their customers. The traditional electronic point of sale (EPoS) terminal has hardly changed in almost 50 years but over the last two years, it’s an area that has experienced a large deal of development from Casio. For those of you who might not know what an EPoS retail system is, it is often the old, tired, cash register you have at the front of your store that lets you process sales. Now let’s not be too harsh on it, it’s probably served you well for many years. However, like everything else, it’s just getting on in years, and new faster, smarter things are leaving it behind - namely the Casio V-R100, the world's first EPoS system to run on Google’s Android mobile software platform.

Aware of this and that technology had progressed dramatically (thanks to her husband Shaun's technical expertise), and that EPoS terminals were now affordable for small business, Emma began looking for a system that would not only gather transactional details, but also to garner valuable management information without incurring the large price tag of traditional EPoS.

In November 2012, Mrs. Conway received the Casio V-R100 and installed AirPOS, the innovative POS solution from the Belfast-based startup. AirPOS worked alongside Casio and integrated their unique EPoS application for Android into these smartly engineered EPoS devices. Guy Boxall, explains that “this is a perfect solution for small retailers, who have traditionally stayed away from integrated EPoS” and according to Martin Neill, CEO and founder of AirPOS, “our joined-up approach to intelligent retailing is really making a difference to how we serve, and keep, our high street customers”.

Perfectly designed for small independent retailers, the V-R100 is an all-in-one solution, with the power and potential of larger solutions costing many £'000s. The V-R100 hardware platform is proving very beneficial for Emma because of its small footprint, consuming considerably less power than most EPoS systems, the V-R100 only requires 20 watts on full power and 4.1 watts in stand-by mode which will save Mrs. Conway considerable electricity costs – critical when electricity costs are only set to rise exponentially. And thanks to its rugged, large, splash-proof colour screen, simplicity and back-office platform to provide real-time remote connectivity, Emma was delighted that it was available to use, straight out of the box.
This revolutionary solution has since proved invaluable to Emma who summarised her experience to date;

"AirPOS on the V-R100 is a powerful, affordable and easy-to-use business tool that is essential to any modern retail business. It’s helped to organise our small business, and hopefully it will help us grow as we can now more closely analyse what we sell. The whole team has been fantastic and this solution will help future proof our business"
Something that Martin Neill agrees with "AirPOS and Casio have created a solution that is not only primed for the modern retail world, but also a solution that is ready for retail’s future." The question for the retail world is therefore a very simple one.

Can you change your business to keep up with the upward trends enforced by new technologies or are you content to rage against the machine? The machine doesn’t sleep and it won’t stop evolving. Just ask the music industry, the film industry or almost every manufacturing industry on the planet. Retail is simply next in line. Technology has created smarter shoppers, are you ready to join Emma in the revolution and become a smarter shopkeeper?

 

For more information on this case study, please contact:

CASIO Electronics Co. Ltd.
Unit 6, 1000 North Circular Road
London NW2 7JD

Guy Boxall
Senior Product Marketing Manager
Tel: 020 8208 7846

email: boxallg@casio.co.uk or bsd@casio.co.uk



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