Vending industry in Europe highlights self-service technology for vending

LONDON -- Hi, this is Craig with kiosks.org with another report on an interesting tradeshow in London by the name of AVEX. AVEX is a tradeshow for the vending industry. I got to the show about 10 a.m. Along with me was Terry Cooper of Telpar. Telpar makes all sorts of thermal printers and Terry, after attending the Kiosks and ATM conference, opted to stay the extra day before heading to Germany for a week.

This was my first AVEX, having had it recommended to me by John Petkus of Hemisphere West, who was there to show the new MATRIX currency acceptor (integrated USB with Cash and Coin).

Walking in I saw there were over 200 exhibitors. Pretty expensive exhibit space too, coming in at more than £6,000 ($9,600 plus U.S.).

At first I was blasted by all the coffee machines. Then it was candy bars and chips.

But another aspect struck me and that was the very high level of sophistication that the enclosures, the payment methods and the interface screens (many of them LCD) displayed. These units came in all flavors for all commodities, and they were very, very, slick (enclosure and aesthically). The design elements pushed very effectively all of the branding and it was a matter of seconds after looking before you realized what the unit was for. There was not any significant advertising integrated visually with any of the enclosures. There was advertising integrated into the displays.

Whether it was pop, or coffee, or food (the Shop24 was there) or pizza for that matter, the vending people obviously recognize and are very practiced at communicating visually, in a nice way, just exactly what the unit is providing the consumer with. How many "kiosks" have you seen that you have no idea what it does (until someone explains it to you)? This lesson and this dilemma impacts kiosks and ATMs (ones which attempt to add extra functionality).

Speaking of pizza: a really slick looking unit for pizza was there. The "kiosk" holds 102 pizzas and gives the consumers the choice of up to five varieties (very epicurean in nature). The unit is completely certified and the pre-cooked pizzas have a shelf life of 34 days. 90 seconds is the cook time. The unit offers advertising during dead-time. Very cool looking unit!

MEI Global has a huge booth right in the center (next to Cadbury). One of their announcements at AVEX 2003 is the EASITRAX Vending Management Solution which provides operators with the ability to capture transaction information and use it in a datamining function. How many (and when and where and at what time) MARS bars have you bought?

New research on the vending industry (via independent firm Metrica) indentified marketing initiatives and better customer profiling as needs in a changing market in the U.K. The new software from MEI helps and will be tuned to provide that information better and better as time goes on.

Another paper by MEI was delivered which addressed the problem of companies inappropriately applying technology and literally becoming a slave to it, at the risk of ignoring the fundamental business plan. A final announcement was on the recent purchase of the leading payments company in Japan (Nippon Conlux).

This gives MEI instant dominance of Japan and Asian markets.

A big part of the MEI stand was the new CASHFLOW acceptors. These units were just recently released in time for AVEX and come with a complete API for customization.

You gotta watch MEI. These folks are the 800-pound gorilla when it comes to retail payment systems.

Another great stand (though much smaller) was NRI. All types of change devices and all ready to use with the Euro.

Finishing up the cash and coin folks is Validation Technologies, the subsidiary of Hemisphere West, which is offering the MATRIX, which has the USB completely integrated and complete Euro (and all other) capability. Rumor has it they are working on a GSM version which would offer wireless transactional capability. The Europeans seemed to love the unit (Europeans are more susceptible to technology seducement than us Luddite Americans...). Eastern Europe (and then Africa/ME) beckons....

Chip and Pin is big over here I would wager. Everybody has it tattooed to their forehead it seems. EMV this and EMV that. Tesco is balking but nonetheless upgrading. The usual POS suppliers are all certified and posturing their credibility. Meanwhile three days ago the first debugging trials began in Northampton (presumably the archtype of British society I heard...).

What all this means is that many of the stands were dedicated to payment systems along these lines, plus there were some covering the contactless cards (pilot going on in Orlando right now and noted on KO). ID cards, parking control, digital cash and vending, access control, medical, smartcards, and others offering high personalization have hard and fast spec's on anti-counterfeiting. Most come with the capability of loading two applications, some come with 16 (2K to 16K). The personalized marketing that these cards make possible is staggering in scope. Meanwhile Target has 16 million issued and $4 billion in receivables right? Leave it to U.S. retail to be a driver.

Some indirect interesting exhibits had types of really cool air lifts for jockeying enclosures (read heavy vending machines).

A final note: one of the units had a proximity credit card reader (the user lays the card on top of the unit rather than inserting it). Besides eliminating a vandal element, it was just really cool to see. I plan on checking more into that tomorrow when I check out the rest of the show.

Brochures, PowerPoints and extended descriptions and commentaries of all of these are available on kiosks.org.

From London May 2003,

Craig

Craig Keefner is publisher ofkiosks.org, the premier source of kiosk and self-service information. Craig may be reached atcraig@kiosks.org.