How shopfitting makes it from smart tools and digitization
to profit.

Bad Salzuflen. (bre) Have you said goodbye yet? Have you already shelved your ideas for modern shopfitting? No? Why not? Stationary retail is dying. And investing in store fitting is a waste. At least, this is how it has been repeated over and over again in all media for some time now. Shoppers now only shop online. Everything is going digital. Or?

How does that feel to you as a shopfitter? They are sure to have creative approaches and ideas for tomorrow’s store fixtures. The challenge facing the entire shopfitting industry is to bring classic shopfitting into the digital age.

The digital world is omnipresent. Just quickly order a new sneaker — I can put together the design online and if I order today, the sneaker will be with me tomorrow. I can also quickly add pizza and after-work beer to my shopping cart with a single click. Simply pay by PayPal or credit card and delivery can perhaps even be set for a specific time. What does this mean for stationary retail and thus for shopfitting?

Touch and try…

One thing is certain: The market share of online retailing has grown rapidly in recent years. But does that mean the end for brick-and-mortar retail? Will shopping transform completely? No! It is true that shopping behavior has changed and will continue to change. But according to a Statista survey, 86% of customers rate the opportunity to sample products in person by touching or trying them out as the greatest advantage of stationary retail. Personal consulting is a close second. This is the opportunity that brick-and-mortar retailers can and should seize. Especially you shopfitting experts will agree.

The stage for products!

Haptics, visual stimuli and personal advice are the driving arguments that draw customers into stores. 84% of customers aged 18–64 say they prefer to buy groceries in stores. For clothing and footwear, the figure is still 45%. The survey makes it clear that not every purchase is replaced by online offers. Food can be checked for freshness and appearance. Taking the cold Coke from the shelf and perhaps spontaneously deciding to also try another variety because it just feels so good can only be driven by animation of the senses. Or feel the leather of the bag and check the seams for quality, works only directly on the object. For shopfitting and retail, however, this also means: higher demands in store design. Products must be presented in such a way that they can be found. If the
Product presentation
appealing, customers may reach for it two or three times. With the right presentation solutions, this turns any shelf into a real
Stage
for every product. In the best case, products sell so well that shelves need to be replenished quickly. The Shelf in this case provides the presentation area. But it is also possible to turn the classic into a modern information tool with the help of digital sensor technology.

What makes production in East-Westphalia-Lippe so valuable.

Bad Salzuflen. (bre) If it were possible to choose a buzzword for 2022, the word “supply bottleneck” would probably be at the top of the list. Whether it’s raw materials of any kind, foodstuffs or materials from various industries — everything is in short supply and delivery times for some goods are delayed by up to months. First the pandemic — then the war in Ukraine — the circumstances under which companies have to produce and make delivery forecasts have not been as unpredictable for a long time as they are now.

Months of delivery time

In a survey conducted by DZ Bank in April, around 77 percent of medium-sized companies in Germany said they were experiencing supply bottlenecks at the time of the survey. Medium-sized companies were the most frequently affected. Here, the figure was as high as 88 percent.

Anyone currently looking to purchase a new bike or game console should have a long thread of patience. For these products, customers sometimes have to be prepared for delivery times of several weeks or even months.

These problems can be attributed, among other things, to factory closures in Asia or reduced freight capacity in the shipping industry. Shortages of raw materials and precursors lead to delays in the delivery of end products. Globalization as a blessing and a curse?

More difficult general conditions

For years, production abroad has offered itself as the perfect alternative solution for many companies. More difficult framework conditions in Germany and a lack of skilled workers versus reduced cost burdens and sufficient personnel are the driving arguments for companies to focus on manufacturing abroad. In order to be competitive and not to deteriorate economically in comparison with other companies, Germany has lost some of its attractiveness as an industrial location in recent years. So why should a company buck the trend and opt for domestic production?

What a surprise: We won the “InterTabac Star 2021” in the category “Shopfitting”!  The readers of the Deutsche Tabak Zeitung voted for our POS‑T Duplex Pusher in an online poll and we are very proud.

In previous years, the award was presented during the leading trade fairs InterTabac and InterSupply. The candidates for the awards were selected by the trade fair visitors. Due to the Corona situation, these events were cancelled. As a result, the editorial team decided on a new procedure. Exciting products were compiled in an extensive pre-selection. Readers were then able to vote for their favourite on a specially programmed page.

We are happy about this great award and also see it as an incentive to continue to invest in new ideas and to realise exciting projects again and again.

Bad Salzuflen (bre). The corks were popping in Bad Salzuflen. POS TUNING has been awarded the certificate “Germany’s Innovation Leader” by the F.A.Z. Institute, a subsidiary of the “Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung”.

33,000 companies were examined by Prognos (one of the oldest economic research companies in Europe) on behalf of the F.A.Z. Institute. The research was based on the patent applications of companies operating in Germany over the past 10 years. In the evaluation, not only the number of patents but also their relevance was assessed. And POS TUNING even outperformed large market leaders from the retail sector in the category “Furnishings or accessories for shops”.

POS TUNING has been a guarantor for innovative ideas and product developments for more than 20 years. What began as a “one-man operation” in a garage in Bad Salzuflen in 1998 is now a globally active company with 200 employees. More than 160 million parking spaces in over 120 countries are now equipped with intelligent technology from Bad Salzuflen.

The company’s mission is based on the realisation that shoppers can only buy what they can see: Make. Shopping. Simply. Better. Managing partner Oliver Voßhenrich is delighted about the award. “This title makes us very proud and also spurs us on. We always want to develop further and continue to help shape and improve the Point of Sale in the future. The fact that we have received this award is above all the gain of a great team from all areas of the company!”