Eastman Kodak Company unveiled its new "KODAK EXPRESS Experiential Store" design, which creates a new photo retailing paradigm for participating photo specialty stores through its KODAK EXPRESS Digital Solutions program. The Experiential Store, showcased in the Kodak booth at Photokina, enables participating KEX store owners to offer their consumers a photo-centric shopping experience, rather than just photo services transactions.

By offering an experience, retailers are better positioned to entice consumers of all age groups and skill levels to do more with their photos, and as a result, grow traffic and revenue. Photo specialty stores, including Magic Photo in Buenos Aires, Argentina, are revitalizing their stores under the new KEX brand to create the experiences that help consumers fulfill all their creative desires.

The Experiential Store leverages a broad portfolio of products and services from Kodak; best practices from some of the 26,000 plus KEX store locations worldwide and strategies employed by the world's top retail environments to create enticing retail shopping experiences. The result is a clean, bright store divided into four key retail areas, each of which inspires consumers to do more with their pictures.

In addition to the store design, Kodak introduced KODAK Creative Production Software, a powerful workflow software designed specifically for the photo specialty retailer. With KODAK Creative Production Software, retailers get a robust backbone architecture necessary to import images from many sources, enhance image quality, efficiently create custom products and output to a wide variety of printing devices.

The software allows retailers to focus on the specific services they wish to offer, both in front of the counter and behind the counter. Its easy-to-use, flexible, and creative tools enable a higher level of customer service and value-added product differentiation. This software, as well as KODAK Adaptive Picture Exchange, illustrates the ways in which Kodak frees retailers from behind the computer to spend more time engaging with consumers.

In addition, earlier this year Kodak introduced a new marketing support methodology, located on the KodakExpress.com Internet site for participating store owners, which includes assets to create a unified look-and-feel, customizable consumer store locator, news, and extensive marketing materials across more than 30 countries and 13 languages. From this site, KEX stores and learn about new products and services available from Kodak, like the APEX, as well as ways in which they can leverage them to drive business. The new offerings show how Kodak takes a holistic view of the photo specialty channel and offers an unmatched end-to-end strategy to help KEX store owners drive traffic, revenue and profitable growth.

Vinod /ITvoir Network