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Decoration is always a matter of
personal taste but it would be unusual to find a house or apartment
without a picture on the walls or an ornament on a shelf. After
all, it’s often the quickest, easiest and most cost effective
way of personalising the space we live in and making it feel
like home.
With its combination of film posters, limited edition prints,
original works, cards and objets d’art, Athena provides
the perfect solution for anyone looking for the finishing touches
to their home decorating project. The brand has been rejuvenated,
following a troubled spell in the 1990s, and there are now 32
Athena stores across the country, run on a franchise basis.
According to Simon Coates, a director of 18 Athena franchises,
one of the major challenges is how to respond quickly to constantly
changing customer tastes, in an environment where best-selling
lines are frequently changing. Athena has no central warehouse
and the distribution chain is quite complex as the company buys
from a number of different suppliers from all parts of the world.
To ensure stock reflects store customer profile, the franchise-holders
need to have accurate sales and stock information at its fingertips.
With this objective in mind, 14 franchises within Simon Coates’
group have now invested in FuturaERS retail management software
from Futura, the Berkshire-based solution provider. The solution
runs on Epson’s modular, MR-800 terminals; based on a
powerful Intel processor to ensure fast transaction processing.
The system’s modular and open design also allows Athena
complete flexibility in how they configure the point of sale,
maximising the available counter space.
Simon Coates commented: “It’s been a huge bonus
to have accurate sales data provided by the FuturaERS solution
and this has proved enormously helpful when making buying decisions.
Overall, the MR-800s have been easy to use and look good but
the key as far as we were concerned has been reliability –
since installing the systems, we have experienced next to no
downtime. We now plan to extend the rollout to the other four
Athena stores within my group.”
For further information contact John James, Futura, Tel: 01635
551246, Email: john@futurauk.com. |
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