Purchase Goods Anywhere: A Checkout Counter on the Move

Challenge
During the holiday season, long checkout lines mean angry customers, decreased customer loyalty and lost sales. To keep customers in the holiday spirit, one of the nation’s largest discount chains tested a mobile checkout system to eliminate check-out lines, even during the busiest shopping days of the year.

“Even with all of our check-out counters open and our associates working as fast as possible, we still lost dozens of sales each day because people were scared away by the long lines during the holiday season,” commented one store manager. “We had to find a way to add check-out lines during our busiest time. Temporary mobile checkout was the only answer.”

Solution
For the store’s mobile checkout needs, the company turned to Zebra printers—the same brand of printer it relies on to label goods in its critical shipping and receiving operations. “We had used Zebra printers in a variety of logistics applications and they always worked flawlessly,” noted the company’s retail systems manager. “As a very public operation, our check-out operations system had to be fail-proof. Once we realized that Zebra offered a perfect retail solution, we never considered another vendor.”

Product
The Zebra-based system utilized a Cameo® portable printer with a built-in magnetic card reader and a portable terminal with an incorporated scanner to read UPC labels.

Result
“The portability of the solution has done more than shrink the checkout lines,” said the systems manager. “The system has enabled new business opportunities for us outside of the store, such as Christmas tree and wreath sales during the holiday season, and gardening supplies and live plants during the spring and summer months.” Based on the test performed, the chain has purchased dozens more units and has rolled out the mobile check out system nation-wide.