Our bike shop software is playing a key role in the running of the stunning new Avanti Plus Cannington store in Western Australia which opened at the weekend.  All four registers we supplied were busy all day when the store opened for business on the weekend.  Reports are that this store has had the highest opening sales of any Avanti Plus store opened anywhere so far - well done!

We are thrilled to be part of the journey not just with Avanti Plus Cannington but other Avanti Plus stores.  It is terrific to see how our software helps in managing the sales of Avanti bikes and a range of other merchandise including bike gear.

Our work with the Avanti bike retailers has helped us develop good facilities for other marketplaces in which we serve.

The Ausbike trade show which drew to a close in Melbourne this afternoon was a great success for us.  We have picked up new bike shop customers for our retail and back office bike shop software.  We also got to reconnect with some of our users.

Our team reports that this was a terrific event for us and proof that trade shows are an excellent way to market point of sale software - the software speaks for itself.

Bike shop owners themselves are a happy bunch, focused enjoying themselves while building strong businesses.

We have our enhanced software for bike retailers on show in Melbourne today at the national trade show for the bike retail channel. We have been working closely with key bike shop users and some suppliers on our enhanced software and are pleased to announce that we go into beta release in the next week.

The bike retail channel, while small compared to other retail channels we serve, is valuable to us because of the exposure we are given to business practices which have useful universal application.

In preparation for the Australian Bike Trade Expo, a major bike retailer trade show, this coming weekend in Melbourne, we laid out the back wall of our stand on the floor of the office.  This four metre wide and two and a half metre high wallpaper looks impressive and strong. Strength is a key feature of our pitch to bike retailers.  Strength of knowledge about the bike marketplace.  Strength of commitment to excellent service for bike retailers.  Strength in our software to serve the diverse business needs of bike retailers.

We are the major software supplier in this channel our credentials have been well established over many years.

Out with with bike retailers has helped us deliver better software in other marketplaces.  Some of their strengths have been useful to newsagents and jewellers - true!

We continue to help retailers cut their tax this financial year thanks to the Small Business Tax Break on offer from the federal government.  We have worked hard to esnsure that our package deal offers for newsagents, gift shops, jewellers and bike retailers meet the guidelines and help our new customers to maximise the benefit to their businesses.  Our sales team has been trained in what is available wwith the tax break and what is not.

With just five months left to run on the Small Business Tax Break, the next few months will be very busy.

Our Bike Shop software is enjoying tremendous success with three new locations in the last week - this is on the back of excellent numbers for April through June.   July is usually a quiet month.  Not so this year.

Our bike shop software is industry specific.  It connects with suppliers, is EDI compliant (electronic invoices) and offers a range of facilities bike shop owners look for from the counter to the workshop.

Our bike shop software also connects with customers through our SMS messaging facilities.  The software will send SMS messages to advise when a special order is ready for collection, a lay-by is due for payment or for other triggers selected by our users.  Bike shop owners love these facilities.

The learnings about retail management have been considerable from the bike marketplace and applicable to our other retail marketplaces.  Particularly in the area of customer contact.  Bike shop owners have a connection with their customers which is unique in retail.  Many are riders themselves and their customers are friends or colleagues.  This connection has driven us to enhance our customer contact facilities.  These enhancements have been useful in other marketplaces.

Our integrated Tyro broadband eftpos solution is now available for bike retailers using our software. This brings the time and money savings of Tyro to a whole new marketplace.  Bike retailers, like other retailers using our Tyro eftpos interface, will enjoy:

• Faster processing.  Approvals are achieved in one or two seconds.
• Fewer mistakes.  Fewer keystrokes means fewer mistakes.
• Lower costs.  The Tyro fees are usually considerably less than for a regular bank eftpos service.
• Cleaner counter.  The Tyro pinpad is setup in such a way to de-clutter the counter.

Our bike shop software package deal is attracting good end of financial year interest.  To help businesses keep to fund the purchase out of cash-flow, we have developed a payment terms approach where the system can be paid for in four equal installments - without interest or penalty cost.

We have included ten free movie passes in the deal for bike shop owners to share the love with employees  when the system is installed.  We see these benefits as important and reflective of broader benefits of the system.

We help bike shops save time from the counter to the workshop. We also offer EDI facilities, lay-by management, repairs management as well as great customer management and loyalty marketing facilities.

Components in the package deal are eligible for the recently passed small business 50% tax break.

We first built our software for bike retailers more than eight years ago.  Today, we serve more than 100 specialist bike retailers in Australia and New Zealand.

The software we sell today a significantly different to what we sold eight years ago. We have learnt a lot over the years.

We are is dedicated to helping owners and managers of bike shops eliminate costs and grow their bicycling retail businesses. We provide smart, easy to use specialised Point of Sale and Management software Retailer for Bike Shops, and support this with exceptional service.

Bike shops fit with our other customers in that they are retailers.  Facilities we develop for other markets help bike shops and facilities we thought were specific to bike shops have been found to help in other markets.

2009 is driving good growth for us in the bike retailer marketplace.

Click here to see the special point of sale softare and hardware package offer just released for Australian bike retailers.

On Thursday December 11 at 11am we are hosting an online preview of our new repairs facilities for jewellers and bike retailers indeed, any business doing repairs using our software.  This is an excellent opportunity to see the new software prior to release next year.  Your feedback could guide final development.  It will also guide our testing focus.  Access is available for supported Tower users only.  Bookings can be made at bookings@towersystems.com.au.

Next week we commence in-house testing of our new repairs management software. This is used by our jeweller and bike retailer customers. After months of customer consultation followed by a major development project, we are a few days away from completing programming. This completely new software will be in testing for some weeks as it is put through its paces against strict operational and performance criteria.

The repairs software is something like the space shuttle to NASA in that this development for a specific purpose has resulted in skills and facilities useful in other parts of our software, even for markets which have nothing to do with repairs.

The continued enhancement of our software is crucial to our existing customers and important in attracting new customers. Anyone who saw our software more than a year ago does not know what it can do today given the work completed by our six full-time skilled Delphi software developers.

With the demise of Bill Express this week, we have been approached by several suppliers of electronic product to join our eziPass platform.  While we are actively researching and considering these, we are maintaining the focus of our development team on our committed projects.  These include significant enhancements for our jeweller and bike retailer customers as well as enhancements for our newsagent and gift shop customers.

One of the benefits of a sizable development team is the ability to take on a variety of work across several marketplaces.

Our next software update, retailer 2.2B is currently in beta release.  Once we it has achieved the required level of user acceptance we will issue this to our entire user community.  In the meantime, development is advanced on Retailer 2.2C - this includes the enhancements to which I referred above.

I would hope to hve an announcement in the next week or two about additional products on our platform.

Following wide consultation, we have commenced development work on a new stock classification module in our Retailer software for our jeweller and bike shop customers. With this new classification module, our users will be able to classify items based on fields specific to the business. While we have done this before, the new facilities take it to a much higher level.

This new module sets us up for a series of enhancements in other areas of the software in these channels as it considerably extends the flexibility of stock data stored in the system.The new classification module will be released in Retailer 2.2C.

Bike retailers can benefit from an end of financial year software offer we have packaged for them.

The offer will run until May 31 and includes our bike shop specific software, point of sale hardware, on site installation, on site training and a year of support services including software updates.

Our target market is the specialist bike shops which cater to serious riders who buy top brand bikes such as Avanti. Our software has evolved considerably over the last five years.

We understand that we are the only software company catering to this niche retail market.

Bike shop owners have taught us a lot about sock management and these learnings are reflected in our software packages for other markets.

Our special offer will be in the mail by early next week.

Bike shop owners buying our bike shop software between now and the end of the month have the opportunity of a free Dell laptop. With many business owners working from home we want to give then an up-to-date laptop with our compliments.

Bike shop owners and managers are welcome to join us for an online user meeting to discuss bike shop software at 11am, April 3.

We will demonstrate software enhancements about to be released, provide some training in repairs, lay-by and other key functions as well as take questions on any topic.  We will also be asking for suggestions for future updates.

To participate in this online user meeting you’ll need a computer with access to broadband and a phone – we streak the audio through the phone for quality reasons. We provide a toll free number for you to call to participate. Participating in this user meeting is the best way to influence our plans for the rest of 2008 so please join in. Reserve your place by emailing bookings@towersystems.com.au.

We are very close to finalising some major enhancements to our software for bike shops. They are the result of consultation with a range of users of our software, here in Australia and overseas. As we find with each of our vertical markets, changes for one usually benefit the others.

Bike shops are important to us even though in number they account for barely 5% of our customer base. We have the highest market share in the bike shop channel and the latest changes will drive that even further.

As with any small business, the challenge is to grow the business without dsignificantly adding to the cost of doing business. This is where we have focused our attention - on better back-office processes which will save operational costs and reduce mistakes. Both add to the bottom-line.

The bike shop software enhancements should begin field testing sometime late next month.

Hosted by Jonathan Tay and Tim Batt at 12 noon January 22 for an hour, this online user meeting will guide bike retailers using our software through new multi-store facilities, the new repairs module in development and other bike shop specific enhancements.  

Half the session will be devoted to answering questions from participants – people can interact as if in the one meeting room yet can be spread across Australia and New Zealand.

To book for this free online event, please email bookings@towersystems.com.au.  I’d hurry though because in the 24 hours since announcing this session to our users half available places have been taken.

Yesterday we announced to our users that in January we will host our first online user meetings. We are currently planning for first three three: one for jewellers, one for bike retailers and one for newsagents. We are using leading-edge commercial online meeting management software to facilitate the hosting. This software enables active participation as well as complete tracking of the events of the meeting.

We are paying all costs including providing toll-free call access for people for audio. Access will be free.

Once we have run these first three sessions, we will schedule a couple of training sessions.

The learnings from these initial events will enable us to schedule more of what our users want from online learning and online meetings in 2008. Here in the office we see an excellent opportunity for regular classes in areas of our software which draw the most questions.

By hosing the meetings online we are reducing travel time, making it easier for more team members in a business to participate and facilitating greater cross pollination of ideas across our user communities.

We have been working on this project for some months, evaluating the various commercial online meeting software offerings as well as considering the most appropriate content and researching the capacity of our user community to engage back in their businesses.

Jewellers and bike shops have been instrumental in guiding the development of our latest software update. Even though the change will appeal across each market in which we operate, it is clients from these two marketplaces which have provided the most significant input.

What is most fascinating is the bigger picture enhancements jewellers and bike shop owners look for compared to our other markets. The enhancements are about improving the efficiency and operational strength of client businesses.

The update will go into production later this month.

We have published a guide to choosing software for bike shops at our website. This is a plain English guide for bike shop owners which aims to help them find the software solution right for their business.

Here are the first three panels of the new brochure we have created for the bike retail marketplace.

We have been selling software to bike retailers for six years and have around 17% of all bike retailers as customers.

A challenge in creating the brochure was to connect with bike shop owners - they are not your traditional business owners in that most are connected with their product category in a deeply personal way. They range from passionate weekend riders to former Olympians who have achieved success on the world stage. What they all share in common is a passion for their product unlike any other retail category in which we serve today.

The synergy between bike retail and newsagencies and other markets in which we serve is deeper than would be obvious to the casual observer. While I am not about to share commercially valuable insights here, I would note that there are enhancements in our newsagency software which have come directly from our bike experience – and vice versa. It is this broader retail world view which guides us to provide balance in our software offering.

The brochure was mailed last week and based on calls yesterday we are predicting that it will be one of the most successful we have ever sent to bike retailers.