Star Micronics is leading the way in mobile point of sale (mPOS) technology in the retail space. In the last five years, retail point of sale (POS) has undergone a complete revolution. The origin of the revolution came with the advent of mobility, but the release of the iPad and other tablets accelerated the transition and wholly redesigned the POS offering, both physically and digitally. In just a few years, several hundred new POS software programs were released, and since the new programs were based on modern operating systems and new communications, printers needed to adapt. This is where Star Micronics culminated into an industry leader by offering software support for the new operating systems (SDK for iOS and Android) and releasing communication support for Bluetooth for iOS (MFi) and Wi-Fi.
Today, Star Micronics has quickly become the worldwide leader in POS peripherals for modern retailers. Star Micronics is no longer just a hardware manufacturer, but a full point of sale solution provider for retailers. They consider themselves a one-stop-shop for all POS hardware including receipt printers, cash drawers, portable printers, kiosk printers, scales, scanners, and more.
“Our offerings are designed to be visually appealing, easy to set up and use on any platform, and ultra-reliable,” says Mamoru Sato, President and CEO, who has led the company to use every market change as an opportunity to employ its long-cultivated technology, expand its global business, and further raise its corporate value. “We understand that retailers need hardware products that can work out of the box with any platform or any software.” According to Mr. Sato, one significant trend in the retail market is the development of cloud-based software solutions for both POS and online ordering. Per Mr. Sato, “We developed a printer and an accompanying program specifically for these new cloud solutions: the mC-Print and CloudPRNT.”
Together, these two offerings connect to the customers’ or partners’ cloud and pull orders and receipts to be printed. The connection with the application can be made locally, through cloud connection, or both at the same time, to support multiple solutions and further boost reliability.
Star Micronics is also helping brick and mortar retailers to stay relevant in a time where e-commerce is booming, by offering an in-store marketing and promotion tool that is free to any retailer using a Star printer. PromoPRNT helps retailers to design and schedule custom printed promotions that keep their customers engaged where it matters most — at the point of sale.
“Since all our printers can be connected to Star Micronics Cloud at set up, users can design and manage promotions to be printed on demand from the comfort of their desk,” said Mr. Sato. “Star Micronics embraced the mobility wave early on, and quickly understood that it was of utmost importance to our partners for our products to be able to communicate with new operating systems as quickly as possible.”
Star Micronics recognizes that retail is a constantly evolving marketing and is developing solutions for emerging market trends such as cannabis retail, interactive kiosks, mobility in enterprise retail, and more.
Star Micronics works with hundreds of software partners to provide a full POS solution to any retailer. With the understanding that each retailer has different and very specific needs, Star Micronics seeks out software partners that can provide a solution for any type of retailer.
Over the past year, Star Micronics has released their latest line of products — the mCollection — which offers a full line of hardware solutions for the modern retailer, including printers, scales, scanners, and soon to come — the mCD4 cash drawer. The new mCD4 will offer a sleek and modern look to match that of the rest of the mCollection line. Star Micronics expects to see the mCollection appearing in retail stores everywhere within the next few years.
The company is also releasing its second AirPrint certified printer, the TSP800II.
“We recently released the first AirPrint POS receipt printer, and in this new year, we will continue to advance with the launch of the TSP800II 4” label printer,” explained Mr. Sato.
