Central control over corporate image

Lakeland: A Case Study

Up to 2003, Lakeland had been using a bespoke labelling system by which shelf edge tickets are produced in store onto pre-printed stock and overprinted in black. This solution proved inflexible and expensive to update. With Lakeland’s growing store base, it was increasingly difficult to create new formats and respond to their stores where fixtures demanded different ticket layouts.

As Mark Goodfellow, Retail Operations Manager for Lakeland said, "I wanted to find a package that incorporated certain features, foremost of all, that it was easy and simple to operate for the user at store level. I also wanted to create more flexibility for us, by having a system that we could develop our use of, over time, by way of introducing the option of having more designs of ticketing available and having the ability to incorporate graphics at some point".

"This had to fit in with our overall systems development strategy and particularly the introduction of a Virtual Private Network (VPN), as we need to gain as much benefit from this as possible to justify the costs involved. net.tickIT will enable us to use the VPN to take advantage of our catalogue database with its graphics, to use this for producing point of sale materials".

To meet this need, Lakeland first engaged Eastman-POS to set up and print all their Christmas point of sale. Eastman-POS are specialists in data management systems and have been a retail print bureau since 1989. Eastman-POS imported all of Lakeland’s sale lines into net.tickIT, their retail POS package, and ran out batches of store tickets in full colour on perforated stock. This exercise ran so smoothly that Lakeland felt confident to engage Eastman-POS to customise net.tickIT for their own specific in store use. A series of meetings resulted in the writing and approval of a technical specification, which acted as the benchmark for Lakeland’s current requirements and future needs.

Eastman-POS supplied Lakeland with a total solution providing hardware, software and consumables for a ‘one-stop shop’. Eastman-POS recommended the EPSON Aculaser C900 colour laser printers as the quality and reliability has been proven during extensive trials in their bureau. The C900 has a small footprint with a front paper hopper and a top output tray, ideal for back of store where space is at a premium. When changes are made to the master product file, the amendments are fed into net.tickIT at head office, which associates the corporate style of ticket with the product. An export file is created by net.tickIT of the changes and this is transmitted via VPN to each store.

At store level, it is a simple task to import into net.tickIT instore and assign this to a print queue. At Lakeland’s request, each store maintains their own ticket profile, which over-rides any pre-set format sent by head office. This is an optional feature as usually the corporate stance is protected. The processed data includes descriptions and two price points with the intention of using product specific graphics on future ticketing as illustrated in the Lakeland’s catalogue.

Each store has been given user rights to change the size of the tickets used but not to change the text or price. However, a Manager’s Special format has been created allowing the creation of a temporary ticket for immediate print. These are not saved in order to sustain the integrity of the in store product database.

Any Lakeland store can print any ticket at a moment’s notice in the current or promotional style, in a format to suit fixtures and for a chosen quantity. In fact, as training only takes one hour, staff were printing their replenishment ticketing an hour later!

Lakeland operates over 36 stores across England, Wales and Scotland. It is a constant task to ensure that all stores meet the corporate standards in retail offering, store presentation, customer service, satisfaction and due diligence.

Eastman-POS has not only enabled stores to take ownership of their point of sale but have enabled a level of pride and diligence by offering users a simple system with a growth and flexibility to suit Lakeland’s future needs.

"It enables us to develop a promotional calendar with seasonal offerings throughout the year. Stores will have the ability to produce their own ticketing. This dramatically reduces our costs and allows stores to control their own local promotions. Given the national spread of our stores and the nature of our product range, this is very important."

Mark Goodfellow,
Retail Operations Manager