Not at The Retail Business Show…

What a shame we are not at The Retail Business Show today. The sudden cancellation of the show and the sad demise of Retail Events means that there is no mainstream retail technology show in this country.

It is easy to follow the fortunes of retailers in the national press or Retail Week. Most operate in a gold fish bowl of having to regularly report sales to the stock market and it hits the head lines. Retail technology companies are much less widely publicised. However, it can only be inferred from the cancellation of the show that suppliers were not queueing to book stands.

In any case, it is not good news for suppliers who lost money, for retailers who wanted to have a look at new technology or simply get together, and anyone who was planning to attend the seminars which Retail Events had worked hard to put together.

Who will be the first to Microsoft Surface in the UK?

The Microsoft Surface looks like a giant touch screen set into a table. It allows users to interact with digital content through natural hand gestures, touch and physical objects. The press releases show people drawing with their fingers, sorting photos by dragging them and moving maps around and then bringing up information about various places. None of these applications are anything new but the use of gestures (similar to the iPhone) and the way a group of people can sit around it and use it together makes it great entertainment. It would certainly add a wow factor to any store and would be a draw to a wide cross section on the population. It might provide that retail theatre that is so often talked about. For more information go to http://www.microsoft.com/surface/

For a retailer though, having got the customers into the store, the aim is to sell some goods as well as provide some entertainment. So what applications could be run on it?

• It could be a fun guided selling tool. It can recognise a product put down on it and provide detailed information about the product, in a format that can be enjoyed by a group.
• What about selling processes that currently involve everyone huddling around a pc? – kitchen design, furniture ordering. How much more fun and friendly this would be when sat around a Surface.

AT&T in the US are the first retailer to deploy the Surface. Is this an expensive red herring which really does not offer huge benefit over more traditional and, presumably, less expensive hardware? Or is the wow factor sufficient to justify the investment? Who will be the first in the UK?

Have you tested EPSON?

Epson, that well known purveyor of hardware to the retail trade, has launched a marketing initiative TESTEPSON. Navigate to www.pos.epson.co.uk/testepson and enter the details of your project and they will recommend the most suitable printer and lend a test printer so it can be evaluated.

I’m sure this is actually nothing new. Epson have been providing printers to retailers for years (how many  TM-T88s are there out there?) and loan stock was always available for retailers to try out but it’s a neat marketing idea.