Background

Golbys Nursery and Garden Centre, Duston, Northampton.

In 1988 a local family, fourth generation, Plant Nursery business in Northampton, which had developed a Retail Garden Centre including a Retail Pet Food and Accessory business, required a computer system to monitor sales and provide stock control.

The initial system installed used third party hardware with fourth party software. The system used a personal computer to drive EPOS tills that nevertheless looked conventional till look-a-likes that had bar code scanning attached. The whole system including the Tills had many negative points.

The Lessons outlined below were learned from this initial work and from the solid basis of our Company, Its Structure, Products and their Support today.

The hardware and support had to come from a single integrated company, with it’s own software development resources which it could readily optimise to all customers’ needs.

Single vertical markets such as Garden Centres alone could not finance the long-term development of either the products or their support, but a broadly based market such as Leisure Retailing (or Specialist Retailing) could. 

Locally based companies would never support adequate development and remote support functions but working totally nationally from a single central base increased costs and response times.

The hardware needed to be pure PC based, with modular Epos hardware plugged into the normal PC connectors at the rear. The computer programs (software), which control the PC hardware, had to be modular and fast, written in the fundamental computer language ‘C’ (now Visual C++ and C#), with the database technology independent of the operating systems such as DOS and Windows etc.

The back office function should always incorporate the till software as well for several good reasons and also have a bar code scanner attached.

It was impossible to determine systems suitability and project viability until basic “hands-on training” was completed and a database set up, hence the origins of our Stage 1 Start up option with which we have started all projects since 1991.

As a result of the experience with the third party EPOS product in 1990 the decision was taken to develop an EPOS system in-house based on the use of personal computers throughout for both “Back Office” and Tills.

It has been continually updated and enhanced ever since and all customers receive regular software updates so that there is always maximum protection against both hardware and software obsolescence.

The on going development of the Easitill product on the Golby site lead to many practical lessons being learnt and features being incorporated for both Plant and Pet applications which were easy to learn, easy to use and cost effective in terms of initial capital and day to day operational costs. The Personal Computer based Epos system thus initially developed at Golbys was then taken to the Glee Exhibition in 1991 and then further developed at Hadlow College, in Kent, as described below.

Although the family later developed the site as a retail property business, selling off the majority of the nursery site for development, this relationship continues to this day with one of the younger original family members, who continues a retail business on the site.

Hadlow College, Kent

In 1988 Easitill began distributing Epos and Labeling systems produced by third parties to  Garden Centres  and Nurseries. All these products had problems of one sort or another and so a totally in-house designed and supported product was launched at Glee in 1991.

As a result of a meeting at Glee, the system was installed at Hadlow College Plant Centre in Kent, where considerable development work was done including testing the claim to be easy to learn and easy to use on the hundreds of college students working as Till  operators, who passed through the Plant Centre as part of their training programme.

This mutually beneficial relationship has continued to this day where now apart from the Plant Centre itself, Easitill is installed in the adjacent Cafe/Restaurant with Touch Screen Unit and in the Farm Shop where the Weighing Scale Option has now been installed.
 
The Easitill system at Hadlow is now managed by a former student of Hadlow College who left and experienced a well-known competitive system  in the process. Having now returned to the college,.The Supervisor will vouch  that  Easitill is definitely the easier system to operate  which results in less time / costs being  used to maintain the product database and less time/costs in training new operators.