Fri, 6th March 2009

Mothercare reduces costs by printing POS instore

Mothercare is the latest retailer to benefit from lower operational costs by adopting instore printing for its point of sale.

The specialist retailer, which also owns the Early Learning Centre chain, is rolling out net.tickIT, the browser-based sign and ticketing solution from Pierhouse, the marketing management specialists, to its entire estate of more than 230 stores.

Initially, Mothercare is using net.tickIT to manage markdown labels and tickets, however, the intention is for all its branches to print data-rich, shelf-edge communications in the future.

"The impetus to move to instore printing was the introduction of Early Learning Centre products into Mothercare outlets and the requirement to manage their markdowns," explains Richard Godfray, group retail systems manager, Mothercare. "While the creation of a markdown label is in itself not a complicated process, we knew that implementing a web-based marketing solution would also provide us with the capability to extend the range of POS we could produce in-store to shelf-edge labels and barkers and save staff time, as well as material and transport costs." According to David Jenkins, business development director, Pierhouse, "Retailers have been wasting tens of thousands of pounds a year creating and transporting point of sale that is not required. This cost may have been something that could have been absorbed or even overlooked when trading times were better, but not in today's climate when every penny counts.

"Generating only the point of sale material that is needed, where it is needed, is one area where they can save money and increase sales."