Article

A giddy kickoff

Bubbling optimism and successful projects take center stage at the launch of KioskCom 2002 conference and trade show.

March 4, 2002

ORLANDO, Fla. - An industry still smarting from the economic downturn seemed to need a little boost to get its sixth annual KioskCom conference off the ground. With attrition and a dried-up venture capital market contributing to a 20 percent drop in the number of exhibitors, KioskCom put some heavy hitters at the top of its speaker lineup.

In fact, leading off the speaker series was the industry's all-time leader in nearly every measure of success for a kiosk project, the Kodak PictureMaker. Rick Rommel, director of Digital Retail Systems, Consumer Imaging for Eastman Kodak Co. (NYSE:EK), opened the morning session March 5 at Orange Country Convention Center with an enthusiastic plug for Kiosks.org Association, the growing year-old industry association of which he is president.

He said 80 percent of the exhibitors at the show had signed up as members, and made note of the gray ribbons they were wearing at the show as reminders.

The photo kiosk picture

On with the optimism, as the 100 or so in attendance heard Rommel reveal some impressive numbers on the PictureMaker project, starting with the fact that 35,000 of them are currently in the marketplace globally, 22,000 in the U.S.

Rommel showed a chart on what Kodak calls the $225 billion infoimaging market, of which $905,000 in revenue is from consumer kiosks.

"That's a significant achievement, considering that the category didn't exist six or seven years ago," he said.

Rommel said the push for more locations will continue, but that the focus for Kodak is on the fight for floor space. With 170,000 photo processing locations in the U.S., he said PictureMakers will soon be "fighting with Twinkies for floor space, and that's the way we've got to look at it."

He said the ubiquity of PictureMaker created an opportunity for a national advertising campaign last fall, in which the company spent more than $5 million to air a :30 spot showing a young boy using the PictureMaker to enlarge an old photo of his grandmother as a gift. He said the campaign helped boost PictureMaker sales across the board, and another campaign is planned in the spring.

Rommel gave way to Kodak Worldwide Operations Director Rick Gary, who provided an informative talk about support and maintenance of the 35,000 PictureMakers. As part of the program, he opened with 20 seconds of silence, giving the confused audience an idea of how long the typical caller is left on hold by customer service. To reduce that time by five seconds, he said, would cost $100,000.

State of the industry

Leading the show with Kodak certainly put a buzz in the air, and consultant Francie Mendelsohn's annual KioskCom speech kept the rally going.

Laughing off the lengthy title of her speech printed in the show guide "An In-Depth Perspective on Successful Advanced Kiosk Applications by Industry," the president of Summit Research Associatessuggested the audience simply consider it her annual industry briefing.

"The industry has had a tough time since last July, and Sept. 11 made a difficult situation worse," she said. "Things are beginning to change. We're starting to see some positive things happen in the kiosk industry."

Mendelsohn showed a series of slides showcasing successful kiosk projects, and seemed especially taken with several European kiosk projects. She said government projects were a much bigger business overseas, where in the United Kingdom a UK JobCentre project included 9,000 units. By contrast, she said the largest U.S. government kiosk project, operated by the U.S. Dept. of Housing and Urban Development, has just 105 units.

Mendelsohn cited trends that have become clear in the last year, noting, for instance, that projects relying on advertising revenue have failed pretty much across the board. She stressed the importance of 100 percent uptime and said that members of the industry should embrace, not fight, wireless applications.

Bill paying picks up pace

Having digested a steady diet of optimism about the industry, many audience members headed for track sessions or the show floor. The three dozen or so that chose the first retail track session learned of the successful rollout of bill payment kiosks begun last year at Sprint PCS retail stores.

Tim Peterson of NCR Corp. (NYSE:NCR) said the average bill payment kiosk accepts $150,000 per month in payments, freeing up store employees to focus on new sales. Peterson said the kiosks were popular with customers, who can use the machines to pay their mobile phone bills by cash or check.

The program began rolling out last April, and 450 have been installed. Peterson said the kiosks have undergone some cosmetic changes, going for a red box to a more stylish mahogany to fit in with store designs, but have remained essentially the same since their launch.