From boutique stores to ‘big box' or ‘category killers', specialty retail stores are known for targeting specific customers with specialized items. These stores generally focus on selling a particular brand or type of item, ranging from books to kitchenware. Operating as a chain or from a single location, a specialty stores may feature a single checkout station situated at a small counter or may offer many high-volume checkout lanes, similar to hypermarkets or mass merchandisers. This is subject to the size of the store and customer traffic. Regardless of this difference, a bar code scanning solution is required in order to serve customers quickly and meet the business intelligence needs of the store.
Specialty retail stores must be equipped with reliable bar code readers that maximize front-end productivity with quick read rates, especially when reading small or other hard-to-read bar code labels. Customer satisfaction and experience is a primary concern for these stores, making bar code readers a key component to a fast transaction. To work around space constraints, specialty stores often require bar code readers with a small footprint. Other challenges, like employee training, can be eased by bar code readers with intuitive features.

	POS Checkout Specialty retail stores are typically characterized by a front-end checkout model, with checkout counters ranging from one to many dependent on customer traffic. Customers typically have a small to medium number items in their transaction. These items can be of low to high unit price and small to large in physical size. Rather than using shopping carts, customers generally place their items on the counter beside the POS terminal, unless the item is very large. These items can range from apparel to large electronics, depending on the store's specialty focus. In most cases, an on-counter presentation scanner is ideal for medium average transaction volumes and an in-counter or on-counter single plane scanner for heavier volumes at specialty retail stores. These scanners enhance first pass read rates and promote the cashier's natural tendency to pick up and ‘present' the items to the scanner. It is important for the scanner to have omni-directional reading capabilities, allowing the operator to read bar codes at any angle for the best ergonomics. If the store sells heavier or bulkier items, it is often easier for the cashier to use a handheld scanner to pick up and take the scanner to the item to be scanned.
	Mobile Marketing At the forefront of consumer trends, specialty retail stores have already jumped into mobile marketing, or the use of a mobile device (cell phone, PDA or smart phone) as a new means of marketing communication, promotion or advertising. This new form of marketing opens two-way communication channels for retailers to directly engage and build trusted relationships with customers faster, better and with fewer costs than ever before. In order to implement such programs, businesses must be equipped with bar code scanners capable of reading directly from a mobile device's highly reflective screen. Imaging-based bar code scanners are required to read mobile bar codes with the best performance.
	Form Automation Many specialty retail stores offer loyalty programs or store-specific credit cards to their customers. Although these programs benefit their customers, it does require the customer to take their personal time to fill out an application. Datalogic's bar code readers simplify this process by extracting customer data using Driver License Parsing. The extracted data from government issued ID cards can be used to auto-populate customer application forms for credit cards, loyalty programs, product returns, licenses and more. By simplifying these applications, businesses can improve customer participation while adding the potential to capture additional customer data for marketing purposes. Capturing the customer's information at the source also ensures accurate records and the highest level of data integrity.
	EAS Deactivation For high-priced or commonly shoplifted items, retailers can utilize Electronic Article Surveillance (EAS) tags to prevent unnecessary shrink / loss; yet implementing these tags requires a solution for quick and easy tag deactivation. Datalogic ADC's bar code scanners are capable of supporting Sensormatic or Checkpoint tags. Deactivation occurs automatically when the item is passed over the scanner. Datalogic additionally prevents the tag from deactivating until there is a good-read from the bar code label, allowing for proper deactivation and only catching truly active tags at exit points.
	Inventory Management Using mobile computers or bar code scanners, retailers can create a cost-saving inventory management system. By scanning each item's bar code label in the back room, in-store and at the checkout, businesses can automatically track items while updating inventory levels. This allows appropriate reorder points for optimal inventory practices to be set. Keeping an accurate and reliable inventory database also allows for better forecasting, reducing the chance of stock-outs, overstocks and emergency shipments.
	Queue Busting The average person spends approximately one hour each day waiting in line, which equals about 2 to 3 years in a lifetime! To relieve this common customer frustration and lost profit from those who leave the store, Datalogic ADC's PreScan™ queue-busting software application is the answer. The PreScan queue-buster is a simple and cost-effective way for retailers to manage peak customer traffic by increasing customer throughput on existing lanes, while avoiding the need to add additional lanes. PreScan queue-busting also provides operators with a handheld solution to scan those bulky and heavy items that would not be placed on the counter, which is an important benefit for these stores. By performing the scanning and bagging portion of the transaction before the customer arrives to the POS, PreScan queue-busting customers will experience a dramatically reduced transaction time. This improves customer satisfaction, provides a more ‘personalized' shopping experience, and reduces the wait time for other customers in line. Additionally, the PreScan software's ‘plug and play' capabilities come without costly POS software modifications and can be configured in two different modes of operation (Single Lane or Multi-Lane) to benefit a wide range of front-end configurations and traffic flows.