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On the road with kiosks.org, part 2

Kiosks.org publisher Craig Keefner reports as only he can on his whirlwind European tour, bringing you the latest from the Continent.

March 27, 2002

Editor's Note: Kiosks.org publisher Craig Keefner just got back from a road trip to Europe. Here's the rest of his travelogue. Read part 1 here.

Friday 18 May

Awoke at 6 a.m., as at 7 a.m. Bob Fincher, NetWorldAlliance executive vice president of sales, and I had a breakfast appointment at the Dorchester with Neil Fullard, an old friend of mine from IBM UK, and his son Matthew. It was great seeing you both again.

At 9:30 the "big" presentation of the day came in the form of Nat Yogachandra of Kodak who presented on the photo kiosk industry and also covered the new Infoimaging thrust of Kodak regarding digital imaging.

The photo kiosks use Elo TouchSystems monitors, are standalone, and allow users to create reprints and enlargements. Some features are sharing photos, ordering reprints, uploading, e-mailing and gifting. In the future the kiosks will allow print@kodak (mass repro), maker, center, and preview center.

"Kodak doesn't provide photo kiosks so much as they provide a total business solution, offering future network vision, training along with world class sales/support," Nat said.

In 1994 there were 848. In early 2001 there are 30,000. 38,000 to be deployed by the end of 2001.

Other Interesting Facts

Wal-Mart has 2,300 stores in the U.S. with one photo kiosk in each store. That kiosk averages 25 prints per day per store with an average retail transaction price of $6.48 each.

Best practices observed by Wal-Mart

• Training/demonstration
• Top management support
• Clerk incentive
• Seasonal POS
• Traffic

Wegmans
The supermarket of supermarkets (renowned for customer service) has photo kiosks averaging 12ppd.

Kinkos
750 stores, one per store. 10 ppd/store. $6.99 per order.

Wolf Cameras
882 stores, 9ppd, $11.99

Audience questions:
What is the average time per session? Eighty seconds to make a print, maybe five minutes per session.

How do you collect user feedback? We periodically station people at the kiosks to conduct surveys, we also survey the stores as well to close that loop.

At $18,000/install (and there are lower priced models available), how long before the unit pays for itself? At a 6ppd rate, the average store gets its money back in six months.

What's Coming? The Digital Camera Kiosk - has great demographics for typical users, and is especially effective for travelers/events, hotels, airports, metro stations.

What are your biggest markets? U.S. is #1 and China is #2. Two years ago China was 17, in two more years China will be #1.

• Fact: $4,500-5,500 is low-cost digital entry level workstation. Makes passports, reprints and stickers. 3,200 units in China, additional 3,500 in China (7,000 by end of 2001).
• Fact: Valentines Day in China at a Wal-Mart averages 100 ppd for 3 days ($6/print). Blue and gray kiosks gives the high tech look (rather than yellow and red).

What is your toughest market? Japan.

At this point Nat reiterated, "Most important, we are selling a business solution. Just so happens that we can use kiosks as a component of the solution."

• Fact: Target Kodak Express - 25,000 units.
• Fact: 150 kiosks in Vietnam.
• Fact: PEP (Personalized Postcard Systems) in Rome, Italy and Colombia trials in Internet cafes (FYI, 25,000 Internet café's worldwide). Cost per unit is under $5,000 (magic mark in emerging markets).

Nat reinforces once more, "We are not selling a box! We are selling a total solution."

Some of the key business drivers Nat/Kodak consider include:

• The unit grabs the consumer's attention
• It encourages consumer action
• It leads to additional sales
• It increases store traffic
• It gives the feeling to consumer of being in control

Great presentation and Q&A session, Nat, and I hope to see you in Rochester soon when I presumably take a vacation (rumor has it...).

Inter-Act

The final presentation of the conference was by Peter Kelly of Inter-Act. I very much enjoyed this presentation. It focused on the CRM application that is running in Sainsburys (grocery/supermarket like Kroger in the U.S.?). The large kiosk greets shoppers as they come in.

Most of the incoming shoppers make the stop at the kiosk to get personalized coupons and offers based on up to two years of historical shopping data. One touch always completes the transaction, as all data is already available via their loyalty card. Special interest clubs, partner offers, personalized demographic offers (is there a baby on the way? We can give you healthy eating advice...).

At over 2.5 million touches per month, it is one heck of an example of one-to-one and "permission marketing". Peter also showed how typical demographic data can be misleading as he showed demographic of a homeless person near Paddington (18 years of age, single, white male) and how that of course matches the demographic of a well-known royal. Imagine these guys hooking into malls...wow!

Definitely the presentation highlight of the show for me.

The show ended and I made the ten minute cab ride back to The Berners (what are those trees in Berkeley Square?). I managed to fall asleep for a few minutes before getting back.

Notes on Exhibition Area

Avatar Interactive had a large and very nice booth. Avatar has 300 kiosks installed in the U.K. Avatar provides interactive kiosk solutions which focus on revenue generation, reduction in overhead, improving customer service and increased product access.

Avatar provides e-business solutions. Whether you want to provide an additional sales channel, lower overhead business model, provide personalization and customization with 24/7 availability, Avatar provides. And we are very happy to have you as a new member of kiosks.org!

One of the sound domes from Brown Innovations was in place and worked perfectly as well as a WebWedge from Mike Kellond and Data Vision.

Every1online had two nice kiosks set up, both with the surfboard model. Very nice!

Editor's Mention: Logina exhibited their Infomat software, and I was very impressed. Impressed enough to award them a Best of Show award.

Drag-and-drop design is key feature with context sensitive assignment of multitude of functions to any component. There are seven modules that at this time comprise the suite. Logina is based in Ljubljana, Slovinija.
www. logina.net

In the exhibition area I had a long talk with Derek Stewart of Netshift and he went over the architecture for Version 5. The latest version incorporates all of the necessary and desired elements for client generation and network monitoring. I am hoping to get the opportunity of interviewing Andy Pinkard of Netshift to learn more about the rich feature set Version 5 has. Netshift is thought to have sold more software licenses than any other company in the world.

Saturday 19 May

I slept in finally. Took a nap just to be arrogant about it.

Sunday 20 May

Back in Minnesota! I came up with several records this trip, all of which I hope to never top in my life. One involves was I call GIGO which is modeled after FIFO (first in, first out). In this case it is Get In, Get Out's.

Counting all of the mass transportation and business excursions and flights, I ended up with over 100 GIGOs. Also seven takeoffs and seven landings in one week, and my first stay at a 5-star hotel (I suppose I could handle a 6-star if required).