The latest version of our gift shop software will be on show at the Reed Gift Fair in Sydney in just over a week’s time. We are on stand 1730 at the large Darling Harbour location – as shown on the partial floorplan to the left.

We are well established and experienced participants at gift fairs around Australia and enjoy meeting with customers, suppliers and sales prospects at these events.

We will have more to say about our specific plans for this important trade show in the next week.

We were thrilled to see promotion of Tower Systems in the recent member benefits pack sent out by the Australian Gift and Homewares Association.    (See photo)

Our gift shop software is a key benefit for GHA members, delivering access at a special GHA price to excellent business productivity software.

Through the GHA relationship we are able to help gift and homewares business owners improve their businesses and strengthen the overall channel as a result.

Our Gift Shop Software is delivering high value benefits to gift shop owners - based on feedback at the recent Melbourne Gift Fair.  Our customers tell us of benefits like:

Greater business enjoyment.  This comes from having less to worry about thanks to our Gift Shop Software taking care of many of the day to day tasks.

Happier working environment.  With sales easier to complete, customer questions easier to answer and mistakes much harder to make, it is only natural that retail employees love their jobs more working in a business using our software.

More money made from the business.  Money is a key measure of success.  Thanks to having accurate business performance data at their fingertips, gift shop owners are able to make more informed, and therefore more financially rewarding, decisions. They are also able to cut labour costs in some parts of the business.

Reduced theft.  Employee and customer theft can have a high cost to any retail business.  Facilities in our software make it easier to track theft and reduce the opportunity for theft.

More time away from the business.  Business owners who want or need time away from the business can rely on excellent facilities which enable remote monitoring and management of the business.

These are the benefits our customers talk to us about most often.  We are pleased to be delivering a solution which helps in such practical ways.

Gift shop software can help turn a gift shop around.  From growing sales to existing customers to helping to attract new customers to helping reduce costs and well as the impact of theft, good gift shop software can genuinely turn around almost any gift shop.

The Tower Systems gift shop software is being used in gift shops ranging from under $250,000 in turnover a year to well over $1 million in turnover a year and from a single store to multiple, networked, stores.

Thanks to rich features and benefits, our gift shop software is racking up terrific kudos from gift shop owners who are seeing financial rewards hit their bottom line.

Beyond developing good software for gift shops, we  provide excellent after sales service to help gift shop owners and managers unlock the benefits which we promise can be accessed through the software.  This after sales service comes in the form of newsletters, email advice, user meetings, online training, trade show based advice and personal business-specific consulting.

Our personal business consulting includes analysis of business performance and the provision of a report outlining suggestions for improving sales, business management and sales margin.

We understand the challenges of retail for any retailer in today’s marketplace.  The goal of our software is to help our retail partners extract better efficiency from every customer contact.  This focus on basket depth is delivering excellent results.

Tower Systems is proud to be exhibiting at the Sydney Home and Giving Fair in ten days time at two locations within the Sydney Showgrounds venue.

We will have a presence at the GHA partners area of the trade show as well as on our stand on the fair floor.

On show will be the latest version of our Gift Shop software and our homewares software.  We will be showing these products off to retailers as well as suppliers and discussing changes which are adding even more value to the relationships between suppliers and retailers in the gift and homewares channels.

We have been exhibiting at gift related trade shows for several years and have developed a strong new customer base as a result.

If you find yourself at the Home & Giving Fair, be sure to stop by and say hello.

The supply chain between wholesaler and retailer in the gift channel has challenges. The number and size of businesses on both sides of the supply transaction doing business difficult. More than half of all gift wholesales are small businesses with limited infrastructure. This holds them back from growth.

On the retail side, there is little sales performance data available to help guide the buying decisions of wholesalers.

Tower Systems, through its Point of Sale software, is helping gift wholesalers and gift retailers to resolve these and other gift supply chain issues. We are bringing efficiency, accuracy and consistency to a channel which until now has been dominated by manual processes.

Our retail and wholesale solutions bring to the gift channel better business tools to save time and improve certainty to both sides of the gift supply transaction.

Our software helps gift retailers track sales, track supplier performance, generate replenishment orders for suppliers and feed sales data to gift wholesalers.

Wholesalers can use our software to manage customer orders and create invoices in an electronic form.

By making the gift channel more efficient, we are able to bring greater certainty to the thousands of families which rely on the thousands of businesses in the channel. As more do adopt the industry standard tools we offer, the benefits will grow even further.

Tower Systems is proud to be a partner of the Australian Gift and Homewares Association.

Tower Systems is helping gift shop owners extract greater value from their Gift and Homewares Association membership by providing better business analysis tools, valuable supplier links and a suite of marketing tools ideal for gift shops.

As the exclusive and preferred technology partner for GHA, we are working with a number of GHA members on enhancements which will drive significantly better business outcomes.  This is a practical example of the value of the GHA / Tower Systems partnership.

Through our GHA membership, we have access to valuable gift shop channel data.  We are use this along with our own business intelligence, to develop a more finely tuned solution for gift shop owners.

As the recently announced preferred software supplier to the Gift and Homewares Association, we have put together a special Gift shop software offer for GHA members.  This offer has been communicated by direct mail and other mediums to help gift shop owners access the exclusive to GHA members deal.

Based on our popular gift shop software, GHA members receive and exclusive discount off any other deal we have in the marketplace.  This is for GHA members only.

Using our gift shop software, GHA members can expect to increase sales, reduce operating costs and earn more from each customer contact.  Our software helps bring structure to the gift shop sales and management process.

In addition to the financial reward, we have been working with the GHA and gift shop suppliers to enhance software facilities to better serve the needs of the marketplace.

We have discovered that some customers of homewares retailers and gift shops are avid collectors. They like to visit at regular intervals and collect the next items in their goal collection.

Our Point of Sale software can help manage this process, making it easy for the retailer to remind customers that the next item is ready and tracking who has collected and who is yet to collect.

Using facilities originally developed for newsagents, our putaway (collections) software provides a level of management around customer collections which has not been seen before in the homewares marketplace.

We are thrilled to be helping homewares retailers innovate in this area. It’s a tough retail landscape at the moment and facilities like we have identified for them offer a point of difference opportunity – already in our software.

More and more homewares businesses are embracing our technology since we have demonstrated its value over generic products such as MYOB which is widely used.

While MYOB is good software, it does not offer the specialist facilities which homewares retailers need if they want to leverage their specialist offer and grow their business.

Yesterday we released a white paper for gift and homewares suppliers outlining how our software can help improve the supply chain from importers and manufacturers through to gift and homewares retailers.

Our white paper outlines efficiency and other economic benefits to suppliers and to retailers from not only our gift and homewares retail management software but also channel-wide practices which can strengthen business performance for all stakeholders.

This work in bringing greater value to supplier / retailer relationships is a key goal of our new partnership with the national industry association, the Gift and Homewares Association.

Tower Systems is proud to announce that it’s Gift and Homewares Point of Sale software has been announced as the recommended software solution by the Australian Gift and Homewares Association.

GHA members can purchase the Tower software with confidence that their industry association recommends its use.

With software solutions developed for Gift shops and homewares retailers and their suppliers, Tower Systems is thrilled with this new endorsement and that we are the only software company with such a relationship with the GHA.

Tower will work closely with the GHA plus GHA retailer and supplier members on the continued evolution of its software to ensure that it serves the evolving needs of the marketplaces and all of the stakeholders.

Our gift shop point of sale software is helping more businesses thrive thanks to gift shop specific tools.

Our latest software makes it easier for gift shop owners to trade electronically with suppliers. This delivers significant benefits beyond the obvious time savings. Five new suppliers have been added in the last few weeks.

By more tightly controlling stock replenishment, gift shop owners can reduce oversupply and other purchase errors. This puts money in the bank.

Delivered with our software is business management training and support which helps gift shop owners leverage the tools in the software to achieve these savings. We understand the importance of not only delivering excellent software but also helping our customers make the most from this.

We are in the final days of preparation for the Reed Gift Fair in Melbourne this coming weekend. We’re on stand 3430 at the Melbourne Convention Centre.

In addition to readying a new release of our Gift Shop Point of Sale software, we have developed new marketing collateral for the trade show. This pitches the value of our offer and our focus on the gift shop marketplace.

The new marketing collateral also recognises that the trade show will be attended by newsagents and jewellers - other important marketplaces for us.

This is what we love about the gift fairs, the diversity in retailers attending.  It is an efficient marketing opportunity for us.

It is a challenge to create visually compelling collateral which promotes software and fits with the visual dynamic of a trade show floor full of terrific product. Software can look dry and unappealing.

In our marketing collateral we are connecting our software with the joy of saving time, making more money and building a stronger business - under the banner of MADE FOR YOU.

We just have released a new Gift Shop Point of Sale software and hardware special offer - based on our specialist gift shop software. The details of the special offer are available on our website.

This offer leverages the Federal Government tax break which ends December 31.

Included in the package is our latest Gift Shop management software, a full package of computer hardware, on site installation, on site training and a year of support.

The Gift Shop software included in the package deal covers: point of sale, lay-by,  stock control, loyalty, theft management, business reporting, eftpos integration, customer accounting, sales tracking and plenty more.

Our team is has been busy at the Melbourne Gift Fair over the weekend. As we expected, we have seen plenty of gift and homewares shop owners as well as newsagents.  We have also had a good opportunity to catch up with some existing users.

With another three days to go, we are set to write some excellent business at this trade show.  Our experience reinforces the importance not only of trade shows but of this particular event hosted by the GHA.

Our sales teams are reporting excellent results from the GHA Home and Giving Fair in Sydney and the Reed Gift Fair in Brisbane from the weekend and through to last night.  Both fairs have been busy and retailers ahve beenmost positive.  We like these trade shows as they attract giftshop owners, jewellers and newsagents - a perfect mix for us.

We have released new marketing collateral for our gift shop and homewares software to coincide with the two gift related trade shows in Brisbane and Sydney starting this weekend.

The new collateral includes the new design poster to the left - pitching our gift shop software, hardware, installation, training and support package for $7,995 including GST.  This is a very popular package with gift shops as it provides a low-cost entry point.

The gift shop software package includes: point of sale, lay-by, loyalty marketing, hamper management, gift cards, integrated eftpos, stock reordering and business reporting. Fror customers we provide professional receipts,  account management and the ability to answer queries quickly.

Our gift shop software has been developed specifically to serve the needs of Australian gift shops and homewares retailers.  We understand that we have more gift shops using our software than any other specialist software.

We are proud of our new collateral.  It speaks to key traits of our business of which we are proud: strength, consistency, trustworthiness and value.

Check out our stand at the GHA Home and Giving Fair which starts on Saturday at the Sydney Convention and Exhibition centre at Homebush Bay.  We setup our stand yesterday and took a moment to get this photo before leaving.  It is a proud moment to see so many parts of our company come together for events like this: marketing, support, sales and management have worked on creating a new look for Tower Systems for the gift shop marketplace.  This will be on show this weekend from ouur stand.

As the biggest supplier of software to gift shops in Australia, we use events like this GHA show to meet with existing customers and to pitch to prospects.  If the trade show is like others so far this year it will be tremendously successful for us.

We especially like gift trade fairs because of  the diversity of the businesses of attendees: gift shops, jewellers and newsagents.  Three markets we know well and like.

We are making our final preparations for our stands at gift fairs in Brisbane and Sydney.  Next weekend, we will be at the GHA Home and Giving Fair in Sydney and the Reed Gift Fair in Brisbane.  It has been a challenge to double our trade show equipment and collateral to ensure that we look 100% at each event.

Trade shows are proving to be very successful for us this year, leading to excellent supplier relationships and new customers.

If you find yourself at either of these trade shows please be sure to stop by and say g’day.

The integrated eftpos link between our point of sale sofetare and Tyro bank is now approved for gift shop use.  This means we can being to gift shops the Tyro benefits of:

• 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 trial gift shop partners using Tyro tell us that they love these benefits.

We own and operate four card and gift shops. Through these have access to gift wholesaler relationships which help us finesse our gift shop software software. From our own gift shop experiences we are able to see opportunities for better POS software.  Our next software update introduces several enhancements which finesse our gift shop software offering as a result of these personal experiences.

Our abilities in the gift and homewares software space are on show in the latest issue of Giftrap magazine published this week by the Australian Gift and Homewares Association.  We were pleased to have an opportunity to contribute quality editorial - a two-page spread - to help gift and homewares retailers in their pursuit of good retail management software.  We are also grateful for an opportunity to support the magazine with advertising.  As members of the AGHA this is important to us.

We have put together a gift shop hardware and software package offer for gift shops keen to access the government’s 50% Tax Break deal which is now law and expires on December 31, 2009.

Based around software developed especially for gift shops and adhering to the latest standards for connecting gift shops with their wholesalers, we are able to deliver excellent business benefits through this package offer.  Included in the price is excellent quality hardware and it is this which is eligible for the tax break from the government.

We are communicating details of this gift shop offer to gift shops in Australia next week.  Our sales team is making appointments to show off the latest gift shop software.

We have created a new briefing for gift wholesalers as the penetration of our software for gift shops increases.  With more gift shop owners keen to reduce the paperwork involved in loading new products, our EDI facilities are ideal for achieving this as well as reducing mistakes which are more likely with manual data entry processes.

The new briefing is available in a group for gift wholesalers or one-on-one for a specific wholesaler.   There is no charge for this service.

We own and operate several gift shops.  This provides our software company with behind the counter experience in the gift shop marketplace and an understanding of gift shop software needs more than your average software company.  It is part of what drives us as gift shop software specialists.  We want the best for our customers and ourselves.

The photo shows our Sophie Randall Melbourne Central location.  We are using this and other Sophie Randall locations to show off our gift shop software facilities: point of sale, lay-by, special customer orders, hampers, gift certificates, stock control, integrated eftpos, integrated security, stock management, shopping basket analysis, loyalty marketing and customer tracking.

The needs of gift shops are, in some areas, different to those of other marketplaces in which we operate.  In other areas they are complimentary.  Our work with gift shop owners has helped us improve, for example, our software for jewellers and our software for newsagents.

Owning an operating gift shops drives us further than your usual software innovation.  We have a live place where we play without impacting other businesses.  This helps us truly innovate, bringing only the best to our gift shop customers.  Our mission is to provide software which goes beyond the average, gift shop software which genuinely innovates for gift shop employees and owners every day.