News

Bluestar hires new CFO for European operations
2012-02-24
American ADC, mobility, POS and RFID specialist BlueStar has announced that Manel Baranera has joined the company as CFO for European operations (that is, currently, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Sweden and the United Kingdom). As CFO, Manel will lead the company's European controllership, manage BlueStar's European investments and capital structure and offer insight into the development of future financial plans affecting the European region. He will also oversee BlueStar's European budgets and forecasting, cultivate and maintain credit line relationships and help fuel projected growth across Europe for 2012 and into the future. Mr. Baranera was previously CFO at Impuls ID Distribution as well, handling structured and managed financials for six companies in five countries. Manel Baranera will work from BlueStar's Barcelona office.

BlueStar adds a marketing manager to increase its development
2012-01-23
AIDC and POS specialist BlueStar has unveiled one addition to its EMEA marketing management team. Ricard Ferrer has joined BlueStar as the first EMEA marketing manager, overseeing marketing and business development efforts across the entire region. Mr Ferrer has a background in technology product management and more than a decade of experience in marketing and design management. He also has extensive channel expertise for ID card printers as well as ADC, RFID and security technology solutions. He will be based in the offices of Bluestar in Spain and work directly with all Bluestar local marketing managers in the EMEA region.

Vartech 2011 : Bluestar bets on rationalization
2011-10-24
After multiple acquisitions in 2010 and 2011 (the latest being Blackroc Technologies, which has allowed it to enter the British market), the American AIDC/POS specialist Bluestar reported on the past year and its strategy for the coming months during the 2011 edition of its Vartech show, which took place a few days ago in Berlin. About 400 resellers from whole Europe came to meet about 60 vendors. Despite the financial crisis, Bluestar has enjoyed in 2010 a nice growth in Europe, France showing the best results of the group in the region. In order to surf on the trend, Bluestar is now working hard on streamlining its organization, even if it does not drop its internationalisation plans in Europe, with an entry on the Italian market in the coming weeks, Benelux following later.

Its Bluestore online shop, which was announced last year, is now fully operational and connected to a centralised warehouse management system and a global CRM: every and all employee of the company in Europe is now able to share its knowledge with its colleagues, anywhere in the region. The distributor has also set up a network of five European Business Development Managers (BDM), which will work on developing some brands or lines of products (Zebra/Honeywell, Intermec, identification, supplies and Star/Panasonic): “the BDM were chosen among the different European offices, thanks to the best competencies we could find any and everywhere. They are the one and only contact in Europe for all interested vendors. This will deeply simplify our relationships with them”, says Dominique Badoil, Bluestar France's managing director. Fusion marketing program is also operational since a few months : several operations have been co-financed and co-organised in Europe since then, and several resellers have been rewarded with Fusion marketing funds (from €1k to €20k). The distributor finally plans to centralise some of its warehouses in the countries where sales are the higher, in order to lower its costs: “but all high turnover products will remain in local warehouses for a better efficiency”, Dominique Badoil adds.

Among the latest new vendors Bluestar signed recently, ITdistri found out HP for its POS offer, currently only in France. Danny Peacock, Retail Point of Sale Channel Manager UK&I for HP, said: “we are exploring to expand the partnership to other countries in Europe, Bluestar being particularly well placed according to him on the POS market. It would complete very efficiently our current distributor network in the region.” Together with HP, we could meet Cegid, a major French enterprise management software editor. The company, which has no deal with Bluestar, usually works directly with its reseller network, but is exploring possibilities to leverage on a distributor network to push more efficiently its POS line of products in several countries. Bluestar also recently signed partnerships with IDTech (smartcard terminals, barcode and card readers), Trimble (rugged handheld terminals), Datacard (card printers) and PARTech (vertical, integrated solutions) in France, Bixolon (thermal printers) and Bluebird Soft/Pidion (handheld mobile computers) in the Iberian region (Portugal and Spain), Newland (auto-ID and barcode scanners) and Brightsign (digital signage and kiosk controllers) in the Nordics (Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden). Karin Rytz and Melanie Muschinski also did during the event their first steps as managing director and marketing director of Bluestar Germany while Frédéric d'Orsay, former CEO of the company for its Southern Europe business, was this time present as the sales director for EMEA Southern region for printer vendor TSC.

Some other interesting products could also be seen on Vartech 2011: the French startup Plug-Up International was showcasing its customizable smartcard/USB key. This product can be used in direct marketing, customer loyalty or warranty support programs and allow companies to monitor very precisely the application of their program, down to the individual users. Topaz Systems presented its eSignature electronic signature pads and software tools. Impinj, a longtime Bluestar partner in Europe, showed that RFID portals were not always bulky, but could be, like its xPortal, installed anywhere necessary in the premises of its users. Finally, Sysdev introduced the last version of its Kalipso universal mobile application generator. With all these vendors and new technologies, Bluestar showed once again on Vartech that it was one of the main AIDC/POS distributor in Europe, acting both globally and locally in the region.

BlueStar expands in the British Islands with Blackroc Distribution
2011-10-06
United Kingdom : American POS, digital signage and AIDC specialist BlueStar has finally entered the British market, the main in Europe, through the acquisition of Blackroc Distribution. In the EMEA region, BlueStar is also present in Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Norway, Portugal, Spain and Sweden. According to Tony Jephcott, the CEO of Blackroc Distribution: "teaming up with BlueStar was a logical step for Blackroc. AIDC distribution is fast becoming the province of major players who have the scale of operation to commit to the stocking levels, marketing activity and financing requirements demanded for the future of AIDC distribution. BlueStar brings both the scale and core capabilities to enhance and expand Blackroc's service offering to UK resellers. BlueStar and Blackroc both share a high value-add business philosophy and this union makes a very good match. With this acquisition, Blackroc Distribution plans to further strengthen and grow its position in wireless mobility with broadened service offerings that comes with a wider product base." If Blackroc Distribution already has a strong customer base in the AIDC marketplace, including RFID, Bluestar while leverage on the distributor to introduce an additional focus on Point of Sale within the Blackroc portfolio as the relationship develops. Blackroc Distribution's existing management team and staff will remain in place, with Tony Jephcott agreeing to remain for at least two years. Both organisations were present at Bluestar’s Vartech Europe 2011 event, which was held in Berlin last Tuesday. Blackroc Technology, a privately owned systems integrator and custom product development company, remains independent of the transaction. The next major missing regions where BlueStar is absent in Western Europe are Benelux and Italy.

BlueStar signs with BrightSign
2011-05-11
POS and AIDC specialist BlueStar has signed a global distribution agreement with BrightSign, a supplier of solid-state digital sign and kiosk controller products. The BrightSign platform is a reliable, non-PC, solid-state digital sign and kiosk controller system designed to manage any digital sign or interactive display. The BrightSign controllers deliver high-quality, high-definition video, images and audio. Users can play media automatically from flash memory cards. Interactive features include support for touch-screens, buttons, mice and other input devices. BrightSign also supports networking for remote content delivery, scheduling of content playback, synchronization of multiple displays for video wall applications, and zones for displaying multiple content windows on a single screen.

BrightSign's product line-up includes a freestanding tabletop display that creates high-resolution video displays instantly without external power or wiring, two looping sign controllers, three interactive sign controllers, and four networked sign controllers. The four networked controllers include two simple looping media players and two full-featured interactive sign controllers that can be connected via WiFi or Ethernet. Across the entire product portfolio, each model offers a different level of functionality, so customers only pay for the features they need. All controllers are dependable, compact and unobtrusive.

Free with BrightSign controllers, BrightAuthor is a PC software application that simplifies the creation, management and monitoring of digital displays. BrightSign also offers the BrightSign Network, an all-inclusive networking solution that gives users the tools to create presentations, schedule updates to displays, manage multiple networked groups of displays, and review real-time reports via a secure Internet connection. With BrightAuthor and the BrightSign Network, BrightSign offers a complete, end-to-end solution for presenting information on a variety of screen formats, both in stand-alone and complex networked situations. BrightSign platform is available through BlueStar offices in Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Norway, Portugal, Spain and Sweden.