Making ‘Design/Build' A Household Phrase

John Dominelli is not a salesman. He doesn't claim to be one. He doesn't even try to act like one. Despite that, Dominelli's company - National Retail Technologies (NRT), Inc. - sold $17 million in point of sale (POS) systems in 1998. "I'm a technical guy," asserted Dominelli, NRT's founder/president since 1987. "I worked 23 years as the director of store level systems with a large department store chain, so I know how I want to be treated. That's how I treat my customers."

NRT, based in Markham, ON, with a support office in Montreal, primarily manufactures, distributes and resells POS components. The 30-employee company designs and manufactures steel platforms which fit hardware into a space-efficient POS system. That's the essence of NRT's unique "Design/Build" concept, which has benefited customers such as a multi-billion dollar international chemical conglomerate.

New System Saves Space And Money
Under this conglomerate's umbrella are 265 paint stores across Canada. Initially, NRT and the chemical company's Canadian division designed and built a system specifically for 105 stores. The system integrated new hardware and software without compromising counter space. Dominelli said that because customers now demand larger POS monitors, fitting a required 15-inch monitor into a space-saving system was challenging. The former monitors measured only 10 inches.

More importantly, pricing at the paint stores had been inconsistent. "Each painting contractor has its own independent pricing," Dominelli said. "The problem was that prices were tracked manually at the counter through price books. This new system allows the stores to automate the pricing for each contractor." Dominelli said since the new system was installed, the paint stores have reported that product pricing is more accurate.

The foundation of the new system is an Indiana Cash Drawer SLD drawer and an NRT-manufactured platform which is screwed into the drawer. The platform is custom-designed to hold a Preh PC-POS 101 keyboard, a Hewlett-Packard Vectra VL7 Pentium II PC and a Hewlett-Packard server. A 15-inch Hewlett-Packard monitor is mounted to a raised plate that can swivel 360 degrees. Windows-NT software designed by the paint stores' parent company manages the system.

"I Don't Like Pushy Salespeople"
Installing the systems into the 105 paint stores took less than three months and cost less than $3,350 per system. The "sales cycle" lasted about six months, but most of that time was spent designing three versions of the platform to get the correct fit. Dominelli hesitates to call this period the "sales cycle" because there wasn't much selling before the actual installation. "We want to become partners with our customers, so we both lay all our cards on the table," he said. "We do this at the beginning of the negotiations. Customers feel comfortable with that."

Dominelli said that his company stresses service, not sales, to its employees. "Rookie salespeople might think our way of selling is not the right way," he said. "I don't like pushy salespeople and neither do our customers. If you push something onto a customer, you're going to get an unsatisfied customer who will deal with somebody else. Or you're going to install a system that doesn't work."

Dominelli believes his Design/Build strategy is more effective than the "sell-a-standard-machine" strategy. The chemical conglomerate apparently believes in Design/Build also. Next month NRT will begin planning to install its custom system at 160 more paint stores across Canada.