The first Alworths’ store will open on 5 November in the former Woolworths site in Didcot, Oxfordshire, with plans to open four more stores before Christmas, increasing to 22 within the next 12 months.  Each store will stock a mix of branded toys, sweets, homeware, stationery, seasonal and garden products and will use touch screens powered by Futura’s EPOS solution. 

Andy Hayzelden, Operations Manager at Alworths said: “Our aim is to provide good products at good prices at the heart of the community.  In order to achieve this we need strong technology.  We chose Futura for its strong pedigree as a powerful inventory management and control process, its merchandising and planning strengths, and reputation as a proven, robust solution.  We’ll be able to use historical trends for recommended reordering and auto-replenishment and will use complete and immediate stock visibility to show our managers which lines are selling slowly, to react fast.”

Andy Hayzelden added: “The Futura people have been very helpful in getting us up to speed quickly.  They’re very responsive to unusual requests outside the normal operation and we’re working closely with them to improve processes for ourselves and other users.”

Analyser, Futura’s new business intelligence tool, will give complete flexibility in the reporting and analysis areas, giving managers immediate up to the minute stock visibility, sales, financial and business operations reports.  It also allows managers to quickly cut and design reports using data direct from Futura.

The first ex-Woolworths’ store, Wellworth’s in Dorset, is already running Futura and manager Claire Robertson commented: “Futura helped us enormously at the start getting the system installed within a tight timescale.  Our team are happy working with Futura, as it’s quick to pick up.”