NEW YORK– January 13, 2014 –KWI, the industry leading Cloud solutions provider to Retail, today announced it has acquired the rights to the Source Code and Associated Patent Licenses for the KWI Cloud 9 Mobile Offering from VeriFone.
“In order to deliver an mPOS solution as fast as possible to our customers two years ago, we partnered with VeriFone to integrate the GlobalBay mPOS solution into our KWI Cloud 9 product, stated Sam Kliger, CEO of KWI. Now that we have successfully deployed more than 50 KWI mobile customers we have reached a level of expertise and leadership to take over development of our own mobile solution. This will enable KWI to deliver mPOS features more rapidly based on our customer’s requirements and better integrated into our KWI Cloud 9 Solution.” KWI and VeriFone announced their partnership for development of Mobile POS and Mobile-‐enabled Cloud solutions for in-‐store in late 2011. KWI has experienced double digit growth since the partnership growing their customer Mobile base to 50+
retailers including retailers David Yurman, Steven Alan, Pandora, Tom Ford, Scoop, and Intermix in 2013.
As a strategic partner of VeriFone for Mobile Retail solutions, KWI has already been defining the requirements and leading the design effort for the development of the KWI Cloud 9 Mobile platform -‐ available on Apple iPads, Mini iPads, and iTouch technology. This announcement brings all mobile resources under one roof to design, develop, and deliver a comprehensive Cloud based Mobile suite of solutions for retailers. It builds on KWI’s deep domain retail expertise in back office enterprise-‐class Cloud platform, and a full range of capabilities offered today on KWI Cloud 9 Mobile POS. This includes multiple payment tenders with cash, credit, gift cards, and other retail forms of payment; Omni-‐channel fulfillment solutions; non-‐sales transactions; and soon to be delivered Clienteling.
“With this exciting announcement for KWI, we now have control over the development of our entire product suite. No other company can match the expansive suite of enterprise-‐class and mobile solutions in the Cloud for retailers today. We have been working closely with the development team at VeriFone to build the KWI Cloud 9 Mobile POS platform based on our domain expertise and design direction, our retailers’ requirements and wish lists, and industry best practices. This gives us full control to deliver innovation and strategic advantage in the Cloud as we have already delivered to our 120+ retailers to date,” said Sam Kliger, CEO, KWI.
“The power of this agreement is that the solutions are already integrated into our enterprise-‐class merchandising solutions as well as offered stand-‐alone for mobile only customers,” states Gary Brill, VP Business Development, KWI. Brill continues, “Our clients will gain more value from our ability to deliver their wish list items and share one single version of the solutions -‐ and now we have full control of the end to end process from design to delivery.”
Initially KWI Cloud 9 Mobile POS was architected to work seamlessly with any Point of Sale Software System and has gained momentum with proven ROI in over 50 retailers since its inception. Retailers chose Mobile for the customer and sales associate experience in the store, lower cost of ownership, and the speed to market advantages. “What has transpired over the last year is KWI retailers experienced a tremendous lift in units/transaction and overall higher sales volumes with Mobile POS in the stores. We analyzed 1.4 M transactions from just 7 clients over two months in the pre-‐Christmas selling period in mixed POS environments (mPOS and registers) and found Mobile transactions had 16.6% more units per transaction and the average dollars per transaction was 20% greater in mobile transactions,” states Kliger, “this was greater than what anyone expected and is the real game changer for our retail mobile customers.”
There have been an influx of Cloud based mobile and mPOS providers for retail but most lack what KWI has spent 25+ years building – a world-‐class infrastructure of people and technology to support the cloud enterprise-‐class solutions with a 24/7/365 helpdesk and advanced managed services, as well as a true Cloud offering untethered from the POS in-‐store.
KWI will be exhibiting its Cloud based enterprise Omni-‐Channel Retail Solutions and KWI Cloud 9 Mobile
POS solution including a look at the new Clienteling solution at the 2014 NRF Big Show EXPO in booth
3711, January 13-‐14 at the Jacob Javits Convention Center in New York City.
About KWI
KWI offers complete Cloud-‐based solutions for a broad range of clients in specialty retailing. KWI customers include Brighton Collectibles, Dooney & Bourke, John Varvatos, Theory, 7 For All Mankind, David Yurman, and Aerosoles. Since 1985, KWI has helped retailers achieve success through use of its leading systems including merchandising, POS, Mobile POS, CRM, and loss prevention. KWI’s innovation
– from delivering leading-‐edge Software as a Service (SaaS) in 1985 to being in the forefront of
technology advancements to deliver true Cloud retail solutions – enables retailers of all sizes with high-‐
end enterprise-‐class functionality at cost-‐effective rates.
To learn more about KWI visit www.kwi.com.
Contact:
Gary Brill, VP of Business Development, KWI
Email: cloud9@kwi.com
Tel: (516) 621-‐2400 ext. 325