Goodbye 2011, and Thank You Everyone!

December 23rd, 2011

Merry Xmas and a Happy New Year from AirPOSThere are years that change your life, entirely memorable and definitive passages of time. There are years you’ll look back at in your final days with fondness and a tear in your eye. For us 2011 will be one of these years.

We would like to thank everyone who believed in our little project and saw the potential we saw to make something truly world-changing in retail technology. That’s you our earliest customers who’ve tolerated us getting it wrong sometimes and stayed steadfast through many frustrations as we learned how to get it right! That’s also you our shareholders present and future who have put your faith, finance and experience into AirPOS, helping us to steer the ship ever upwards. That’s you too our Chairman and board members who have selflessly given so much time and took every punch with us along the way with good humour (most of the time!)

And that’s you too our staff past and present who have all had a part to play in keeping this train rolling, and will all deserve much praise and thanks when we get to the promised land we’ve all seen hover into view on the course of this journey. Somewhere there’s a distant star just waiting to be discovered, and our collective effort, endless energy and perseverance will see us all reach there in the end.

Not to forget our families who have put up with the long hours, missed dinners, late nights and early mornings that come with tech start ups. And of course every supporter from every spectrum of life; the people who are in this with us from here to the US and beyond and everyone else who is climbing the start-up mountain and took the time to give us a leg up along the way. We love and appreciate you all.

Here’s to 2011, and some star catching in 2012.

Everyone at AirPOS Ltd…

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System of a Down – If It Doesn’t Function Offline, It’s Time to Look Elsewhere

December 20th, 2011

Epic FailIt’s the nature of technology, it doesn’t like to show off. Last night I thought I’d impress my younger sister and her boyfriend by using my iPhone and iPad as a remote control to my Mac to watch movies through Plex (http://www.plexapp.com)on my HDTV. Just ‘cos I could. Now I’ve used Plex successfully on my own a thousand times, but put it in a situation where you’re actually boasting about your tech credentials and software will trip you up every time. This time, nothing at all worked. Nothing.

It’s like software knows that you’re showing off, and decides to remind you that it isn’t your slave. Cue a blank screen, sound coming from the wrong place and a login box for the remote control part looking for a username and password that I’d long since forgotten. Scuppered again.

And this is invariably what happens when you demo the software you’ve created. For months all goes smoothly and you’re watching the data flow around the system like binary water, pouring a virtual pina colada and basking in the warm glow of uptime pouring from your screen like digital sunshine . Introduce a VC or a customer to this of course and the seas of data get choppy, the boats destabilise and if you’re unlucky all of those previously happy little bits of data are tipped overboard. If you’re really really unlucky that little digital sun burns out, and all is dark and moody.

But fear not! The situation is recoverable most of the time. A flustered techie gets into the bones of the thing fast and something works, whereby proving the concept and you’re rolling once more. But of course this is most definitely not the case with ePOS. When the gremlins bite at the point of sale they take a pound of flesh, leaving queues of customers scratching their heads initially and then, after three minutes of contemplation, wondering if they really need that £50 coffee machine after all.

Yesterday we had a conversation with a potential customer with multiple points of sale across a number of locations. These points of sale all operate off the same WAN (Wide Area Network, remember those???) and the customer had found some impressive ways of extending the system even further by using Remote Desktop and other tools. He’s a smart guy, and has worked around the limitations of his current system very well. And then we found out why he’d gone to such great lengths.

We listened with our jaws agape as he told us: “If one till (that’s register to our US friends) goes down, they all go down.” We rubbed our eyes in disbelief. Really? Someone designed this to be this way and actually not only released it but actually sold it? And at that old scandalous ePOS price point too? The cheek!

We took great pleasure in explaining to him that with AirPOS, this was not the case and that in fact if one till (register!) goes down on our system not only does it not adversely affect the overall setup (‘cos that’s just daft right?), but the till (you get the idea US guys) operates offline until its connection is restored, for as long as is required too. Not only that in times of abject disaster like hardware failure it can be replaced and booted up from exactly where it left off within minutes. He got excited, we got excited and hopefully the rest is history, just like his current ePOS should be and will be with such appalling limitations.

This story touches on what we think is the key ingredient in cloud ePOS, offline functionality is critical given the aforementioned tendency for technology to hit the skids exactly when it’s needed the most and of course with broadband not being excluded from this in any shape or form. It’s a hard problem to solve, we know because we’ve solved it and it works like a dream. And even better the data waits until the connection is restored before seamlessly synching to the backoffice, giving a safe harbour to all that critical data. It was an uphill struggle, but we’re pleased to say we’re finally there and seemingly waiting for ‘old’ ePOS to catch up.

So that’s it, the industry issue is solved and solved well. From here it’s all about the features you’ve been asking for and doing some amazing things with the data we collect across all of your channels. But we may never demo it again though, just in case ;)

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Crazy Mary?

December 13th, 2011
The Steptoe and Son High Street

The Steptoe and Son High Street. Coming to an English city near you?

So the report on reviving the high street from Mary Portas, the Queen of Shops, has finally landed with 28 recommendations for how high streets in England and independent retail in general can up its game. And while there are some good suggestions in there, in particular aimed at the changing role of local authorities and landlords, there is one huge glaring omission. Of the 28 points, not one relates to the use of technology and how independent retail can adopt new practices to not only compete better online, but to drive customer loyalty and numbers to their stores.

Now we’re biased of course, we’re not retailers, we’re a retail technology company and our agenda is clearly to adopt more customers. But there’s more at stake here than the report reveals. The changing face of the high street is about many things; the recession, extortionate rates, the rise of uber-retail and its impact on the smaller guys in the marketplace being some of the factors. But what you can’t ignore (and Mary does) is the changing habits and attitudes of the consumers who are key to the success of any high street.

Consider this comment from Tesco CEO Phillip Clarke in June 2011 for one.

“We now live in a multichannel world where three in 10 UK adults now own a smartphone and 5% a tablet computer. So when we talk about the future of the high street, we have to see it in this context, not put it in some silo or reserve. That’s not how consumers view the world anymore. Their high street, their computer, their smartphone – all these offer different ways of shopping and all are converging…”

This is wisdom from the top of the tree, and it’s about giving consumers what they want. Sure a better, cleaner, better laid out and more welcoming high street will help independent retail, but ignoring the elephant in the corner won’t. The modern consumer has more choice than ever, and younger people have grown up in an era where independent retail exists on multiple channels. It’s natural for them to seek products on smart-phones, tablets, computers and by whatever means they can get the best deal. That’s just common-sense and the use of the tools at your disposal.

Independent retailers who aren’t realising and planning towards this, if not working in this way already, are heading for a dire future. If you can increase your turnover and customer base by exploiting multiple channels there is no logical argument for not doing so. This can only add to your high street presence, not detract from it, by placing your firmly in a market-place where, whether you know it or not, you’re getting murdered by the big guys.

And don’t give is the cost argument either. Delivering multi-channel sales, improving your processes and adopting technology has never been easier nor cheaper than it is right now; the cloud is your saviour in this regard. Adopt it, use it, exploit it. It’s there for you. These technologies that only a couple of years ago were the exclusive realm of the big guys are now within your grasp and are improving daily. In the end the web will win.

This is not just a war about the high street, this is a war on many fronts with the hearts and minds of the customer and their increasingly hard earned paycheques. Reference Amazon’s agressive and frankly bloodthirsty initiative to quite literally rob small retailers of their customers, but to actually use the small retailers to do what Amazon can’t. Get tactile with the products before you buy them at your local retail store, use our app to scan the barcode and buy it from us and we’ll give you money off. That’s not a warning shot across the bows, that’s a declaration towards invasion! Small retail now works for Amazon, one of the very things that is killing it. That’s genius, no matter how cynical.

Fight back! Give your customers what they want and how they want it, and they will happily deposit money into your business. Ignore how your customers want to do things and you might well end up following Mary’s advice, namely:

“We’ve got car boot sales in some really horrible car parks off the M25. Why would you go there? Put them on the high street. It makes absolute sense.”

No it’s nonsense. If Mary really believes that what customers want is to see car boot sales on the high street then we await the return of the rag and bone trade, surely that’s equally missing? The Steptoe and Sons version of the high street? We’d be better with the Benny Hill version.

Alternatively examine the advice of Google who have a blossoming retail strategy kicking into gear in a big way…

“All payments need to go digital and all inventory needs to live in the cloud…” Osama Bedier, VP of Payments at Google, Web 2.0 Expo, March 2011

I think it’s clear who’s forward-thinking here and where a clear winner will come from. Maybe the government could cancel Mary’s fees and us them to provide free broadband to a bunch of high streets, which they would for a good long time. We can dream. But no matter how you get there see you in the cloud…

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Thinking Outside the Box (or why your old ePOS machine could be much smarter than you think…)

October 10th, 2011

Okay so now you’re worried right? Wrong headline. Management speak alert! Well you’ll have to forgive us for that, but this is not forage into the doublespeak dictionary of the sales folk, or a flight into blue-sky thinking or similar marketing claptrap. Nope, none of that, we promise.

ePOS = More Control SquaredInstead by the end of reading this page you may well be looking at your old ePOS machine with a newfound respect. There are more brains in that little black box than you’ve ever imagined, and we’re about to show you how to unlock all the creativity, intelligence and sheer unadulterated selling power in just a few minutes.

So let’s get some terminology out of the way first. When we talk about grey box software, we mean the old, tired, duff looking ePOS software you may still be using to process orders. Now let’s not be too harsh on it, it’s probably served you well and put many pence or cents in your till over the years. Like everything it’s just getting on in years, and new faster, smarter things are leaving it behind. That’s evolution folks, and it isn’t going to stop.

Next up for definition is what we’ll call Cloud ePOS (only because no-one has come up with a better term yet, all suggestions welcome.) In contrast to Grey Box, Cloud ePOS is it’s brand new smarter cousin, cloud connected, web aware, data ninja apps and behemoth backend systems that not only lower operating costs but also perform much of the heavy lifting that used to eat up your weekends and evenings, leaving you to concentrate on your customers.  Also they’re called apps, which is just geek-speak these days for applications.

These apps put all of your important data like sales, customer details, products and other data up there in that great big cloud, allowing you to manipulate it at will, pass it other applications and much much more from any internet connected computer. Now instead of wading through CSVs and spreadsheets in a darkened stock room off some noisy server, you can sit at home in the conservatory with a cup of coffee or check your sales half way up a mountain if you really feel compelled to do so. But really, that’s just part of the story.

When we set out to build AirPOS we did so because in a decade of building e commerce stores for retailers under the guise of No More Art, our web development company, we had noticed some emerging problems, most of them exacerbated by us!

Notably the lack of integration between ecommerce stores on the web and existing ePOS setups in store meant huge problems in controlling inventory, which of course only got worse as the volume of sales rose. Sold on the web? You better make sure you have one to dispatch. But what if it had already been sold in the store? You had a problem, unless you could order more quickly. Which threw fulfillment into chaos. The outcome? Dissatisfied customers and that’s a damn good reason not to adopt online selling until you’re well prepared. This was before even considering the melee that occurred when there were returns to deal with. Net result? Chaos with a capital F!

Add multiple stores into the mix and the problem is multiplied again. It’s curious that ePOS got left behind in the development of ecommerce but it happened, so with AirPOS we decided to take a step backward to correct this, to give retailers a joined up platform that intelligently controls inventory and sales. To ensure that the technology at all points of sale work in tandem instead of against each other. And for added effect we decided we would try to do all of this in real time, for genuine visibility across all of the sales platforms. Our (cute) equation for this is ePOS = More Control ².

And the last part of all of this was deciding on a platform and it made most sense to target what’s already in the store. The little blinking black box with a touchscreen that’s been there all along, not knowing that it was part of the problem. We decided to reform your ePOS terminal, to boost it’s IQ and drag it, willing or not, into the modern era. Now we know that iPads are a beautiful device, but we’re going to leave them to our competitors for the time being. Until we see Apple operating a seamless ePOS on iPad or iPhone in their stores we’re going to consider the iPad immature for this use. Until Apple can say about their own ePOS setup ‘it just works’ we’ll stick to making your little black box smarter and extending your existing investment. We’ll call that logic, in deference to style.

A raft of new AirPOS features will be launching in late October. Sign up now to test out the new features at http://airpointofsale.com/demorequest.html

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Putting ePOS in Perspective

July 24th, 2011

From our LinkedIn Group, New Retail Technology http://lnkd.in/Ss5Bkt

From Gene Mosher, who pioneered the use of touchscreen interfaces for ePOS.

“When the boy standing in line to order her (sic) salad has a far more powerful, more versatile, better connected device in his pocket or hand than the restaurant owner’s POS computer is, well, what does that tell you?

When the girl sitting at the table waiting for someone to take her order has a far more powerful, more versatile, better connected 3D LED TV in her studio apartment than the restaurant owner’s POS kitchen display is, well, what does that tell you?

There was a time when I was operating my restaurants when it became clear to me that the cash register, which had only recently been re-engineered from a purely mechanical device into an electronic one, deserved no better a fate than to be ‘uninvented’. Over 30 years ago I set about to make that happen and was successful. In this era I am similarly clear that POS systems deserve the same fate – to be ‘uninvented’. The current state of technology not only makes this possible but also makes it easy.

I have always found tremendous satisfaction in the application of technology to hospitality organizations in ways that make them more efficient and more profitable. The challenges and the opportunities all lie within the user interface.”

We couldn’t have said it better ourselves…

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Shiny Progress…

May 31st, 2011

AirPOS in the iPad. How'd that get it there then?

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The West is the Best – Day 4, 5 and the Rest

April 9th, 2011

There’s little better in life than eating M&Ms and blogging an adventure or two while watching the planes swoop in over San Francisco Bay. It really is bliss, we need a bay like this back home in Belfast. I’ll get the shovel, let’s do it.

So it’s been a wild ride around the US taking in San Francisco, the beautiful San Jose and the heat (and unseasonal winds) of Palm Springs. Our arms are sunkissed, our foreheads are red and inside and out we’re smiling as we reflect back on the last few days.

Picking up on Day 4, the day started with a hugely productive meeting with Bill McKiernan of Cybersource, who was a gent as always. Following this we took a tour (and had a Guinness or two) at the smallest Irish pub in the whole of Silicon Valley, at the Irish Innovation Centre in the heart of San Jose. The IIC as it’s known is a base for Irish companies looking to penetrate the investment opportunities and markets in the US and we can think of nowhere better to start. We left without a price list folks, but we’ll be in touch soon to find out just how we go about getting set up out here.

Finally we made our merry way to our second ITLG Awards at Stanford University (via 1 Infinite Loop of course!). Last year we were there as fans of Arnold Schwarzenegger, this year we were there as nominated finalists in the Best Emerging Technology category. In short we didn’t win the award but we can’t complain, we were up against some fantastic businesses and the winner Intelesens are making a world beater of a product for monitoring vital signs and pre-empting health problems. Being that they might actually save our lives one day, we’re happy to applaud them (and we want a freebie for that guys!).

In the main category we were lucky there was no gambling allowed as we would most likely have put the farm on Mcor Technologies and their crazily cool 3D printer that allows real 3D objects to be printed using standard inkjet paper. If you can print a Master Chief or an Easter Island head, you’d have got our vote. But we’re being a little remiss here because quietly in the background the folks at SkillPages had been building up huge traction and eye-popping user numbers over a very short period of time. The numbers play out, and they were very worthy winners in the end.

We were also hugely proud to see our own David Kirk named as one of the ITLG Silicon Valley 50, an inaugural award for the top 50 Irish executives in Silicon Valley. None more deserving of course, if only for single handedly trying his guts out in a Herculean effort to get Northern Ireland’s companies and entrepreneurs climbing the ladder. We’ll get there David, keep kicking our collective arses until we do.

Lastly, the VC panel was hugely revealing with interesting approaches, arguments and counter arguments on where venture is going from Andreessen Horowitz and Kleiner Perkins among others. Listening to the heavyweights of the Silicon Valley venture world is fascinating, and it’s highly inspiring that they’re talking to a room full of Irish executives, businesses and entrepreneurs.

For those who question the strength of the network and the motivations of the Irish diaspora in Silicon Valley (and I’ve heard you say it! You know who you all are…) sitting in Stanford witnessing the best business brains of a generation punching it out over the new way and the next level for tech investing makes your view less than irrelevant. There’s a network here to be harnessed that is absolutely the best in class, and we are fortunate and humbled to have witnessed it breathe life into Ireland, North and South.

And of course all of this would be meaningless without some world class ideas and companies lining the corridors, which of course there was in spades. We had great chats with InishTech, Movidious, ImeeGolf and loads more and we found a great potential partner in TapMap, which could be bringing AirPOS stores inventory to the palm of your hand if things work out. Not to mention we also got to chat to Tom Malloy, the CTO of Adobe systems and one of the Silicon Valley 50 about our product, and the Adobe Air platform in particular which was great and massively exciting for us.

So we may not have won the award, but we know that there’s a difference between a failure and a loser so that’s okay. Next year we won’t be printing 3D video game characters or saving lives, but we might well be the dark horse with the big subscriber numbers and a hugely innovative product under our belt. That is certainly our aim and we’re excited to get back home and get cracking on it.

Thanks ITLG, an enlightening experience and a pleasure as always. And thanks to David and Leigh Kirk for letting us wind down in their beautiful home and making an already perfect trip even better.

Until next year, keep the award warm fellas.

PS any stories you might hear about the madcap antics of our Chairman Tim Brundle and why you should never bet against a Silicon Valley billionaire are absolute bull ;)

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The West is the Best – Day 3

April 5th, 2011

So in the latest of our continuing adventures on the West Coast of the USA we pick up the proceedings on day 3, with the jetlag subsiding and the traipsing around Chinatown in San Francisco firmly behind us. We’re here for the second time at the ITLG Awards, which is due to be held in the hallowed halls of Stanford University tomorrow night. Last time around we were guests, there to soak up the atmosphere and meet Arnold Schwarzenegger in the flesh.

This time around we’re proudly here as nominees for the Best Emerging Technology award. Cards on the table? We were stunned to be nominated and will be floored if we win, but in either case we’ll be very happy as with the ITLG awards the well worn cliche of “it’s not the winning, it’s the taking part” really rings true.

Today kicked off at the EBay and PayPal campus in San Jose, meeting with PayPal for a chat about AirPOS and everything POS from payments to Near Field Communication, cloud inventory and more. We also saw some coffees being paid for with an iPhone being swiped over an NFC reader, the smoothest and slickest transaction you can imagine.

We saw the future of digital payment, with not a card nor a pin in sight. This payment system was on a trial basis ahead of rolling out to the mass market. It can’t come soon enough. The banks and middle guy merchants have been messing up payment for years, a revolution is required and imminent. PayPal aere talking up a storm of new approaches and new ways to help people send and receive money. Hallelujah, praise whatever. JFDI!

Next up we went to visit with the ITLG at their spiritual home in the Irish Innovation Centre in San Jose. Based on the site of a former nightclub, the IIC is a hub for Irish companies trying to crack the US market or raise funds and whilst it’s still in its infancy a cursory look at the plaques on the wall suggests it already has many of Ireland’s top players inside. And with a mini Irish pub to, just to add to the allure (bottled Guinness is suprisingly nice BTW.)

Lastly we were treated to a wonderful meal in the Los Gatos Brewing Company down the street from the IIC. As always with everything these guys do it was first class and the dinner table conversation was inspiring. We learned about what is wrong with Ireland’s tax laws in attracting US investment, and that nestlabs.com is building a competitor for Angry Birds (PS, joke but Johnny I did say I’d make something up.)

So the West is the Best right? The West is the Best? Get here, and they’ll do the rest….

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AirPOS Features in New Tech Post

March 11th, 2011

Nice write up, thanks to Tom Murphy for his insight and support. We’ll get proper headshots for next time Tom, we promise! The full article is available here http://newtechpost.com/2011/03/10/airpos-helping-vendors-from-the-cloud

Airpos: Helping Vendors From The Cloud

Martin Neill began his working life as a music journalist for the New Musical Express and The Guardian newspaper. He called time on his journalism career when he found himself becoming more fascinated with websites and the potential of the Internet.

He started his own business in 2003 specializing in ecommerce and online selling. It became clear to him that retailers needed to integrate their website activity with their business processes.

The classic model for point-of-sale (POS) operations is that a hardware manufacturer would make the hardware. Then, there would be a software vendor who would piggyback on the hardware. On top of that, there would be a network of dealers that go out, sell and install the POS apparatus.

Martin realized that there had to be a better way of doing this, so he started AirPOS which began originally as a little side project and mushroomed from there.

Timing, as always, was very important. Cloud computing with its advantages of timely updates, real-time backup and freeing the end user from nearly all of the application maintenance chores, was becoming more prevalent and more accessible as a platform.

From day one AirPOS was built in the Cloud. Martin explains further, “What we set out to do was cut out all the middle points in the point-of-sale industry, although we utilize those if we need to.”

“We are creating a disruptive model: on the hardware that you currently have, in 90% of cases you would be able to install AirPOS directly. That is the software suppliers and the dealer network bypassed.”

“Therefore we can provide a very affordable point-of-sale solution to retailers with all the benefits of it being web-based.”

AirPOS is based in Belfast, Northern Ireland which Martin does not necessarily see as being a handicap, “Software as a service (SaaS) can be done anywhere. So being in Ireland, from that point of view, shouldn’t be an impediment when it comes to raising investment.

“When it comes to building something as quickly as possible and scaling as quickly as possible, then there are places where that might happen quicker, but things are getting better.”

He goes on to say that there are a few differences between how things are done in the US and how they are done in Ireland. “Americans are very accustomed to the risks involved when dealing with small software companies.”

“The people in Ireland aren’t so accustomed. They haven’t seen the big successes. But using Silicon Valley as a model for Irish entrepreneurs, it becomes simply a matter of ironing out the kinks and cultural disconnects.”

To help further iron out these kinks and develop better connections, Martin says, “Coming to the awards ceremony is a wonderful PR opportunity.”

“Every time we come across the people that are part of the ITLG (Irish Technology Leadership Group) and the technology leaders that are associated with it, we get rigorously challenged.”

“We certainly learn a lot from these people, even if we spend only two hours with them. You get a good going over in every aspect of the business.”

“For us, the PR opportunity is wonderful, but the feedback and direction from some of the leaders in Silicon Valley is invaluable.”

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AirPOS Shortlisted for ITLG Awards

February 11th, 2011

AirPOS Shortlisted for ITLG Awards

Following on from a successful Series A funding round, AirPOS Ltd is shortlisted for the 4th Annual ITLG Awards in Silicon Valley.

Operated by some of the most successful investors and CEOs in Silicon Valley, the Irish Technology Leadership Group Awards in Stanford University is a key date on the technology calendar for both start-ups and more established technology businesses in Ireland. As the ITLG Awards enters its fourth year, AirPOS are very proud to announce our nomination as one of three selected companies in the Most Promising Technology category. The awards ceremony will again take place at Stanford University on April 5th 2011.

Having attended the 3rd annual ITLG Awards in March 2010 Martin Neill CEO and co-founder of AirPOS Ltd said; “The ITLG Awards is an amazing event, bringing together some of the smartest and most welcoming people I’ve had the pleasure to meet with some amazing Irish technology. To be nominated for such a important award is an honour in itself, we are very proud of the progress we’ve made in less than two years as a business and are looking forward to engaging with the ITLG and their associates again in the hallowed halls of Stanford.”

AirPOS director and investor David Kirk, an ex Senior Vice President of AOL and Cisco Systems, said of the nomination: “This is a fantastic recognition of the progress AirPOS has made as a company and a great step towards the next level of our journey. It’s the right time to take AirPOS to the US in a real way, and there is no better platform to do so.”

Coverage is online at http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/finance/2011/0211/1224289520951.html

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