Two of Maher's three shops - in Welwyn Garden City and Fleet - have been equipped with the technology and they are already paying dividends. Tony Maher says the development is in line with his company's policy of providing a more welcoming environment in which to shop, conscious that 50% of the population never ventures into a book shop. "We wanted to create a bright, contemporary design, with the infrastructure that would enable our staff to be able to offer an exceptional service to customers," he said.
"We also wanted to stock a wide range of products; but we have always been aware that our industry has been suspect of new technology - and a similar attitude prevailed with audio books."
Believing that CD-ROMs would replace encyclopaedias and other similar reference works, the retailer embraced the necessary technology by installing demonstration machines, and stocking a wide range of CD-ROM titles.
In the eleven years since setting up, Maher has worked continuously with CRE. "From talking with Andy Meichtry from CRE, I knew that they had developed a new piece of software which would allow the customer to interact with the pod, and, as their new software was developed for music, wondered whether we could adapt this software for Audio Books to better use the space and provide the catalyst to increase sales in what has always been a fairly weak sector."
He rationalised that because shops tended to stock a restricted range of audio books, the public remained in blissful ignorance of the thousands of titles that were available. He envisaged a post at which a minimum of 500 titles with endless samples could be navigated by genre, title, author or reader.
"With an audio book you are almost buying blind and no-one knows what it sounds like. Now, if you want to hear, for example, Martin Jarvis reading you can find out at the press of a button which titles he is associated with."
Publishers have been quick to lend their full support by supplying sample content in MPEG and JPEG format - as well as audio clips on CD, with bibliographic information and jacket images. Tony Maher believes that the library could grow to thousands as titles get added. "And it means that from a sellers point of view you can retain limited product on the shelf, with 24-hour order fulfilment from wholesalers of anything not stocked."
To make the customer experience as friendly and intuitive as possible the ordering process needed to be simplified. Thus CRE developed a receipt mechanism within the kiosk - all the customer has to do is deliver the print-out to the sales counter.
"I monitored sales performance over the nine months prior to installation. We then trialed Posts in two of the four shops we had at the time and I measured the percentage sales of the total turnover. In Fleet the sales have doubled and in Welwyn they are considerably higher."
Each title runs samples between three and five minutes long and each month updates are received by CD or internet. CRE handle the content management and Mahers themselves manage the edits. The high-resolution touch screens can even be used as advertising media allowing shops to recoup some of their costs by offering, for example, 'Audio Book of the Month' slots.
(Chris Henry)
