The MarginMate story begins in 2004. Wayne (one of the founders) owned a 20,000 sq ft flooring store. The flooring store had an overwhelming number of products including 1,500 labels for carpeting alone! This was the time that the price of oil was rising, resulting in weekly price increases on just about everything. “Trying to keep up with price changes and making sure we were showing the right prices to our customers was overwhelming,” said Wayne. “Missing a price change could spell the difference between making money or losing money on a sale.” To try and keep up with all the price changes Wayne started to put all of the products and the prices on an Excel spreadsheet. The stream of updates numbered in the thousands.

“The spreadsheet helped but we still struggled getting the prices out to the floor and in the sales staff hands,” admitted Wayne. It was time consuming and frankly the sales staff was not overly motivated to do this administrative task. Wayne also discovered pricing mistakes on a regular basis. Wayne admits that, “One day I finally had enough, there had to be a better way so I called Glenn (who is the other partner in MarginMate).”

Wayne had known Glenn for years and knew he was an expert in data and automation. Glenn was intrigued by the challenge and started to research the problem. At first he thought he found a solution in Australia but as he looked at it more closely he knew it was not quite right. But then he discovered Pricer and Electronic Shelf Labels. Glenn and Wayne went on a road trip to see what exactly Pricer had to offer.

It was good, but not great. The problem was that the Pricer solution was not able to speak to Wayne’s Point of Sale System. This meant that price changes would need to be entered into the POS and separately into the Pricer solution. This simply was not good enough for Glenn and Wayne. Glenn then went to work.

Glenn worked on developing a solution to integrate the Pricer system with Wayne’s POS. Glenn then further went on to develop additional solutions such as software that would scan pricing, import manufacturer prices and allow bulk price management ability. They created so many custom solutions and integrations that Pricer hired Glenn for a couple of years to support product development. The relationship with Pricer became so close that one day Pricer called Wayne and asked him to provide logistics support including warehousing inventory and organize shipments so that things were easier to implement at the retail level.

When IBM won their largest Electronic Shelf Label installation Pricer hired MarginMate to assist with installation logistics.

MarginMate grew out of Wayne’s need to make his retail business work more efficiently. They looked for a solution and when they found one, it was close but not perfect. Their relentless nature and inner geek called out to them to create the system the way it should be. The way a retailer would want it. They work tirelessly to create a superior system. When done they looked at their work and realized that this would help a lot of retailers. Wayne sold the store and launched MarginMate.

There are lots of people who can sell you an Electronic Shelf Label solution and it will work OK. But if you want it to be superior, solve your specific issues and customized to your needs call MarginMate. Making these solutions better is part of their DNA.