"We are coming up on our first anniversary of our business relationship with JDS, and I wanted to share with you the success that I feel we’ve had.

"As you recall, in late 2003 we were researching new solutions, store level POS and home office inventory management, for our retail outlet store division. We were frustrated with the product and support we were receiving at that time, and knew that changes had to be made for us to continue to grow our business.

"We approached our decision needing to accomplish several criteria.

1. We needed to be able to better control our profit margins on a SKU by SKU, category by category, and store by store basis.
2. We needed to allow our stores better visibility to multiple items (on-hands, receiving, and sales) so that as we empowered our store managers, we were also giving them the tools to help them make decisions.
3. We needed to be able to have a solution to enable us to move our selling capability out of the store and do off-site events. Our procedures, prior to finding JDS, were to manually handwrite tickets and bring them back to the store to transact. Most of our off-site events lasted 20 hours of selling time, only to have to take another 30-40 man-hours to transact the sales back in the store.
4. We needed to modernize our POS hardware at store level.

"As you know, the decision and approval process within The Coleman Company was long and tedious, and many companies would have given up on us… but not you. You continually stayed in contact to see if there was any assistance you could give us, and you responded in a timely manner when called upon.

"Our rollout, beginning in April 2004, was very well planned by both you and your staff. The pre-rollout training of both Tradewind and WinRetail was very thorough, and our implementation team was well-prepared to then train the store personnel. And more importantly, everything occurred just as we had laid out. The entire process was painless and, surprisingly, event-free. The stores simply turned one system off on Sunday, and turned the other on Monday. Every store went live without an issue.

"As part of our decision, as you’re well aware, we decided to source our own hardware solution. When we started to experience severe hardware issues in the fall of last year, JDS was there to support us every step of the way. Many other companies would have distanced themselves because they didn’t sell us the hardware. However, you and your staff came to the rescue in every instance where we needed you. We could not have gotten through the struggles and impact to our business, if JDS had not continued to support us as you did.

"Our off-site selling events became a very important part of our strategy in 2004, as we grew the vents from 10 in 2003 to 37 in 2004. That growth would not have been possible without the offline capability that Tradewind has, and that you promised would work for us. And work it did. The offline capability not only reduced our after sale transaction man-hours to zero, it also allowed us to speed up the transactions at the time of sale… a VERY important part of getting the customer in and out as quickly as possible. I truly believe because of our ability to speed the customer through the checkout process, we were able to increase our sales at each event by almost 20%.

"With all of this said, I want you to know that I feel our implementation went far beyond our initial goals that we laid out. We have been able to completely monitor our margins this past year, to identify margin issues, and to remedy those before they got out of hand. We’ve also been able to reduce our shrink significantly through efficient receiving at store level. Plus our store managers have fewer out-of-stocks, and better understanding of how to drive sales within their stores. The net effect of our relationship that we established this last year was to help us move to record profitability for our division.

"Dan, I am very impressed at how you and your team truly value the input from your customers. This result of this input was very visible and the User’s Conference just held, where you listed all of the improvements that had been made in the systems over the last year because of the input from your various customers. What a difference from the environment we had come from with our prior POS systems.

"I can’t thank you enough for how you have delivered as promised, and taken us to new levels of information. I look forward to growing our businesses together in the future."

David Conger
Sr. Director of Retail
The Coleman Company