Bad Salzuflen (bre). Since spring 2020, we all have to deal with a new normality. Masks, disinfection, distance and many other new realities have changed our everyday life and the way we think and act.

This has become particularly visible in retail. Spacers in the form of stickers, flutter tapes or prescribed walkways are supposed to provide more safety. Maintaining the distance in the highly frequented checkout area is a particular challenge. In most cases, there is only a lack of hygiene protection for staff and customers at the checkout counters. In this zone of the store, however, proximity to the customer is also unavoidable, as the products have to be placed on the checkout belt by the customer and the employee has to pull the products over the scanner.

Employees and customers have almost the same demands and wishes when it comes to safety. They want to be in a protected environment both when working at their workplace and when shopping.

What do customers think?

According to the POS Marketing Report 2021 from the “Rundschau”, for 55% of customers the implementation of Corona hygiene rules is an important criterion when choosing a shopping location. And this survey result is no surprise. The partly makeshift “protective guards” with wooden slats and tacked-on plastic sheets not only look uninviting, but also do not inspire confidence. Apart from their usefulness. A customer is more likely to prefer a market where he has the feeling that the protective measures apparently offer him more security.

What applies to employees in the retail trade?

According to the Covid regulations, employees in the checkout area are exempt from the obligation to wear masks. However, without the use of sneeze guards, they are exposed to the same high risk of infection as their colleagues. The employer must ensure the protection of his employees. According to the 23rd Covid Order of 15th December 2020, this results in an obligation for all persons in workplaces and establishments (…) to wear a mask covering their mouth and nose. For the retail sector, this means:

So what to do?

“The variety of checkout counters and their respective shapes and designs is large. So the challenge is to develop a protection concept that can be applied to every checkout counter in retail,” explains Oliver Voßhenrich, managing partner of POS TUNING. According to recent studies, 58% of shoppers expect hygiene standards to be maintained in checkout areas as well. Oliver Voßhenrich describes the innovative idea of the Bad Salzufl-based company as follows: “We have developed a kind of flexible modular system that allows us to adapt and install hygienic sneeze guards to any type of checkout counter in just a few simple steps.”  This system is made of recyclable PETG and features, among other things, high transparency and break resistance. All parts can be mounted directly on the checkout counter and are adaptable on site. “We thus offer our customers 360° all-round protection, because the basic package with front and pack protection can be extended at any time with the back and door protection,” explains Oliver Voßhenrich.

What does the future hold?

Although it is hard to imagine at the moment, there will be a time after the pandemic. What will it look like? How will our thinking and actions change? Oliver Voßhenrich explains: “Our shopping behaviour is already no longer the same as before the pandemic. The demands in the retail sector in terms of hygiene standards have increased. Shoppers want to feel safe when shopping and, above all, understood by the retailer. He must know what moves his customers. This also includes the fears that shoppers have. Of course, shopping should still be fun and not become an excursion into the unknown. The “feel-good zone” has been expanded to include the “safety zone”. This is where new thinking has to start.”  In a survey for the EHI whitepaper “Handel mit Abstand”, 57% of shoppers were in favour of keeping the use of hygienic guards at checkouts even after the pandemic. Hygienic sneeze guards for checkout counters are a piece of the puzzle in the new daily routine — they can give employees and shoppers alike a sense of security. But that’s not all: according to BGHW, the hygienic sneeze guards from POS TUNING also meet the requirements for the retail trade. An investment in the future and in a new, different everyday shopping life.

Press contact

Maren Brettmeier

+49 5222/36965–646

+49 1721338139

www.postuning.com
info@postuning.com

Bad Salzuflen/Biemsen-Ahmsen. The retail push feed experts have retooled and expanded their production in the Corona pandemic. The demand for a secure job for cashiers is high throughout Germany. Production has been strengthened by 90 temporary workers to 190 heads.

Thomas Reineke, Lippische Landeszeitung

Corona has turned the world upside down. Also the processes and production in many companies. A good example is POS TUNING in the Meerbrede industrial estate. Since May last year, the specialist for push feed systems has been producing enclosures for cash registers in the retail trade — with success. “By the end of April we will have sold around 15,000 hygienic sneeze guards across Germany,” says managing director Oliver Voßhenrich.

Ideas exchange:

At the beginning of the Corona pandemic in spring last year, there were internal consultations at POS TUNING: “We asked ourselves in the team what our most important partner, the food retail trade, needed in order to protect both employees and customers from the risk of infection,” says Oliver Voßhenrich. The result was, among other things, face shields, spit guards, hygienic protective walls and, most recently, entire checkout enclosures. POS TUNING first supplied the city of Bad Salzuflen, among others, with protective walls — and subsequently also lawyers and doctors’ offices.

The problem was material procurement:

Demand rose quickly, and so a new problem arose for the company founded by Udo Voßhenrich in 1998:” We initially relied on plexiglass. But the demand for the transparent material increased so much due to Corona that it became far too expensive and in some cases could no longer be obtained at all,” recalls Oliver Voßhenrich.

PETG as the solution:

And again, good advice was expensive: “We then came up with the material PETG, and that was the key.” PET or polyethylene terephthalate is a plastic resin. Consumers know it in particular through the so-called PET bottles. PETG is a further development. It is clearer than PET, virtually as transparent as glass. “In addition, we were able to improve the structural rigidity of the material for our purposes, yet it is only three millimetres thick,” says Voßhenrich. This material forms the “walls” of the checkout enclosures. PETG is recyclable. It ends up being shredded back into granules, from which new plastic material can be moulded.

Customised solutions:

“We have developed a kind of modular system with which we can plan the right construction for practically any situation,” says Voßhenrich. Because: the checkout areas are fundamentally different from grocery chain to grocery chain, sometimes even from branch to branch of one brand.

Complete service:

It was also quickly clear to those responsible at POS TUNING that they could not leave the customers alone with the construction of the checkout enclosures. “We therefore offer a full service,” says Oliver Voßhenrich. This means that the Bad Salzufler company currently sends 130 two-person teams all over Germany at the same time to bring the ordered enclosures to the stores and set them up “ready to go” on site. POS TUNING gets the additional staff for this from service providers. “It would be impossible for us to build up so many staff so quickly ourselves,” says the managing director. The staff of the service providers are trained in Bad Salzuflen and then the packed goods are sent to all corners of the world.

Managing Director Oliver Voßhenrich stands at the model of a transparent protection for a workplace at the market checkout. POS TUNING currently sells such enclosures all over Germany. PHOTO: THOMAS REINEKE

Digitalisation in retail

POS TUNING was founded 23 years ago by Udo Voßhenrich, the father of managing partner Oliver Voßhenrich. The internationally positioned company with its 180 employees generates an annual turnover of around 30 million euros. “We are currently looking for further reinforcement”, says Oliver Voßhenrich. POS TUNING is a specialist for feed systems that always move the goods to the front of the shelf at the “point of sale” (the place where the customer’s decision to buy is made). This makes even a half-empty shelf look full. The experts from the Meerbrede industrial estate on the A2 are also in the process of digitalising retail. Modern feed systems from POS TUNING record the stock of goods and report it in an app, for example. Fully automatic reorders are also possible.

Next big order:

Despite this enormous effort, the set-up in the stores remains the “bottleneck” in the entire value chain, according to Oliver Voßhenrich. Because: “If a team is good, it might manage three, at most four markets a day.” And demand remains high. POS TUNING recently received a large order from a food chain. Voßhenrich does not want to reveal the name. “We were asked to do so by the customer,” explains the managing director.

Production strengthened:

But POS TUNING has not only had to increase its logistics, but also its production because of the new line of business. The production in Meerbrede has been reinforced by 90 temporary workers to 190 heads. Voßhenrich has solved another problem among Salzufl entrepreneurs. “The packed goods were almost bursting out of our company. That’s when I asked Andreas Reibchen from the exhibition centre if he could provide us with temporary hall capacity.” No question for Reibchen. So POS TUNING can currently use 1000 square metres of space in exhibition hall 20 for picking the material for the cash register enclosures. From there, the boxes go on their journey to the markets. The rental contract is valid until mid-April for the time being.

Working without a mask:

When the trade fair business starts up again, Oliver Voßhenrich may have to think about another solution. In any case, he does not assume that the need for hygiene measures everywhere where there is a lot of public and customer traffic will be resolved when the pandemic hopefully subsides soon. “People have been sensitised by Corona. An employee at the checkout will want to protect himself or herself from viruses and germs in the future as well. The big advantage of the enclosures is that the staff inside don’t have to wear a mask. We have had this clarified by professional associations,” says Voßhenrich. So it is quite possible that the new business segment POS TUNING will be maintained in the long run. (Rei)

Contact the author: treineke@salzeagentur.de

Press contact

Maren Brettmeier

+49 5222/36965–646

+49 1721338139

www.postuning.com
info@postuning.com