Australia and New Zealand, said the new design provided the opportunity to map out the customer journey, make the stores more friendly to the brand’s service style and, a more efficient environment for the team to work in. “In skin care a lot of our customer interaction is sitting down talking to the customer about their skin and their concerns and trialling product,” Donohue told Inside Retail Weekly. By removing traditional POS terminals and replacing them with mobile tablets, Jurlique aimed to remove the physical barriers between staff and customers. The new technology required altering the protocols for customer interaction, with the advantage of being able to access to the customer’s data and purchase history during a consultation. “Being mobile on an iPad means we can now provide consultations, recommend treatments and sell products wherever our customer is most comfortable,” Donohue said. Apart from the design aspect, the older POS technology was becoming more difficult to integrate with other parts of the business. “Our current point of sale was an in-house developed system, so while it was quite functional from a point of sale perspective, but it came with the traditional heavy hardware and a fixed position. It became an issue to integrate with newer systems around the business,” Donohue said. Rolling out the new system from Vend began in February this year, with each store being set-up overnight to ensure minimal impact on sales and customers. “We called it Project Asteroid — we wanted to completely remove our old system with a bang,” said Chris Balogi, director of global IT at Jurlique. “And we did, though you wouldn’t have known it. We switched across each store to the Vend system in just 12 hours. When we closed up for the day our old point of sale system was turned off, Vend was set up overnight, and we opened ready for the next day’s trading. Over the past three months, all of our stores across Australia have adopted Vend and moved to the cloud with zero downtime for the business.” Internationally, the Adelaide-based brand will focus on growing its presence in the UK and Europe markets in the next six to 12 months, following the opening its first concession in Debenhams’ Oxford Street store last month. Jurlique has concessions in all Myer and David Jones stores Australia-wide, an e-commerce site and 150 pharmacy accounts. Its products are sold in more than 20 countries across the globe. Access exclusive analysis, locked news and reports with Inside Retail Weekly. Subscribe today and get our premium print publication delivered to your door every week.