More than 100,000 specialists attended the event for retail and its partners in Düsseldorf – every second visitor had specific intentions to purchase.

Retail companies and their partners arrived at the industry’s premier event, EuroShop in Düsseldorf, feeling optimistic. The positive economic climate suggested the likelihood of increased readiness to invest and justifiably aroused hopes of a good trade fair. Over the five-day run of EuroShop 2008, these high expectations were far exceeded. From the very first day the doors opened, the mood was upbeat, with many new customer contacts forged and a surprising number of deals closed.

This year Microsoft had decided to invest in a common stand for partners working with Microsoft based solutions for the retail markets. Together with Qurius Germany (formerly known as Cabus) LS Retail was shown at two stands. Qurius presented the German version of LS Retail NAV whereas Jörg Schmikale, LS Retail Training and Consulting Manager, presented the latest release of LS Retail AX and LSPOS.NET.

‘For the last 5-6 years LS Retail has been at EuroShop and Eurocis together with the colleagues from Qurius. Especially last year, the Cabus stand was a large success, so we did not believe that we could achieve the same results with two booths at the large Microsoft stand. But the success was surprising – not in terms of numbers of visitors, but because of the visitors knew what they were looking for and most of them were already far into the decision phase. We recorded interest from about 20 prospects outside Germany representing 900 stores and 1300 POS. Many of them expected to install a new retail solution within three months and some need to install new solutions before the Christmas rush,’ says Carsten Wulff. ‘We have not yet received the evaluation from Qurius, but we all expect them to be even larger.’

Jörg Schmikale has been at EuroShop for more than 15 years representing companies like Anker Systems, Omron, Naviplus and LS Retail. ‘EuroShop is almost like a family gathering. We visit the stands of former colleagues and friends working in the industry. This year we used the opportunity to introduce LS Hospitality and especially the Meal Planning functionality to one of the leading companies in the industry. They saw large opportunities for the solution in the Food Service industry, so we will continue our discussions. We also made initial contacts with German companies which could become potential LS Retail partners later on.’ 
 
EuroShop is not just about finding new customers and partners. LS Retail also met with existing customers and partners from Germany, Denmark, Norway, Russia, the Netherlands, Belgium, the Baltic countries and even from Mexico.

Based on the success of EuroShop 2008, LS Retail hopes that Microsoft will decide to be on next year’s show – LS Retail will certainly be there.