Description

Teddy Mountain is a franchisor in the child-related retail industry. The Teddy Mountain Experience brings children into stores to create their own stuffed animals. Children first pick an empty plush skin, for example a cuddly teddy bear. Once their new friend has been selected, they continue on to a stuffing machine (integrated into a large three-dimensional mountain) which fills the teddy bear with soft fluff. After stuffing their new pal (no pun intended), the child selects clothing, shoes, and even sound modules in order to build their own stuffed animal customized to their liking. Their teddy bear now complete, the children advance to a touch-screen kiosk where they answer a few questions and have their picture taken with their friend. A custom birth certificate is printed and delivered to them at the cash register. As with most stores in the child-related retail industry, Teddy Mountain stores have party rooms where children celebrate events and each child makes a friend.

Software which impacts retail customers

LavaBlast created the aforementioned touch-screen kiosk which allows children to make their own teddy bear birth certificates. Thanks to an integrated webcam, the children can revisit this memorable event throughout their childhood. Furthermore, LavaBlast’s software can be seen in action on Teddy Mountain’s website where an e-commerce engine allows retail customers to peruse the product line, buy new clothing and accessories for their stuffed animals, and even buy a completely new teddy bear.

Software which impacts cashiers

LavaBlast created an industry-specific point of sale for use in Teddy Mountain stores. Teddy Mountain doesn’t require an extremely complicated point of sale (POS) as there are only a few hundred different products for sale in a store. Previously, Teddy Mountain was using commercial off-the-shelf software which did much more than needed but since there were so many features, it became difficult to use and lengthy cashier training processes were required. Furthermore, there were a few key features that it simply did not do.

The main feature which drove the adoption of a tailor-made POS was integration with the stuffed animal’s birth certificate. When plush skins are scanned on the barcode scanner, the system offers to optionally associate a birth certificate generated during the day which is automatically printed when the transaction is complete. This process is more environmentally friendly than printing it as soon as it is created (at the kiosk) plus as it is directly integrated into the POS, it saves the cashier time and is less error-prone. The POS also supports a frequent buyer program, a key feature in this industry; gift cards are associated with the frequent buyer program, which is a great safety net in case of accidental gift card loss. Finally, as stated previously, child parties are huge revenue generators in this industry. As these modules are interconnected, many interesting features have been added such as reprinting a forgotten birth certificate days later or purchasing items immediately (as a gift) and returning to the store at a later date to live the experience.

Software which impacts franchisees

Franchisees benefit from the industry-specific point of sale as it is very easy to use and therefore dramatically cuts training time. Furthermore, franchisees manage their employees and view sales reports in the POS software. Additionally, franchisees have access to a web-based portal in which they can define their store prices and offer bonus frequent buyer points on certain items. As the portal is available on the web, multi-unit owners can manage their stores from the comfort of their own homes. Also available on this portal are reports similar to those found at the POS level, but allow store comparisons. Additionally, as a web-based application, new functionality is available such as geographical customer maps using Google Maps.

This web-based portal is a core part of FranchiseBlast’s solution, but it is not limited to product maintenance and reporting. The key idea behind FranchiseBlast is to offer a franchisee/franchisor collaboration framework for both file and idea sharing. The solution includes wiki, blog, forum and file sharing modules which facilitate the dissemination of marketing material and allow franchisees to team up, discuss solutions to common problems, and design new attractions to enhance the franchise concept.

Software which impacts franchisors

Franchisors benefit from FranchiseBlast as the tailor-made software ensures that all franchisees follow the same business practices. Furthermore, the franchisor is responsible for managing the product line available in the stores, which solves two problems simultaneously. First, by managing the product line on the central web-based portal, the franchisor feeds information into all the stores while at the same time updating the website’s e-commerce engine. This reduces cost by eliminating duplication of effort; the franchisee can be grateful that when new products are made available, lengthy product creation processes are no longer required. Second, by doing this work centrally, the franchisor reduces franchisee theft because the point of sale can only sell items which are authorized in the franchise’s product line. Indeed, although most franchisees are honest, there are a few which try to bend the rules; LavaBlast’s software helps prevent some cases of fraud. Another example is that birth certificates cannot be printed without being associated with a transaction, hence reducing “alternate” payment methods which would reduce the royalties received by the franchisor at the end of the month.

A world of possibilities

Given the software we’ve already created for Teddy Mountain and thanks to the FranchiseBlast integrated solution, it is only logical to explore extensions. In the medium term, we shall be unveiling some interesting modules built on our existing infrastructure. First, we shall be creating an online community for the store’s frequent buyer program. Customers will be able to do much more than simple online shopping, they will be able to go online, log into a secure system, and view the complete set of birth certificates they produced during the Teddy Mountain experience. In addition to being able to reprint damaged certificates from home, they will be able to share their certificates with their friends and family. A grandmother living thousands of miles away will be able to see their joy in their loved one’s eyes when they had their picture taken with their new friend. This online community will help stimulate gift card sales. Second, thanks to the increased availability of webcams, we shall make the adoption certificate maker available online to complement the online shopping experience. Finally, we shall allow for online party reservations where the stores’ party room agenda will be automatically updated with the online reservations. Online party invitations will be sent off to the guests and friendly reminders shall be distributed before the event.