Eason & Son
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| Eason and Son, Ltd | |
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| Type of Company | Private |
|---|---|
| Founded | Dublin (1819) |
| Headquarters | |
| Industry | Retail Wholesale IT Solutions |
| Products | Books Stationary Newspaper Cards and gifts Toys |
Eason & Son (or Eason's as it is more commonly known) is a major chain of stores which specilise in books, stationary, news/magazines, cards and gifts based in Northern Ireland and in the Republic of Ireland. 58 Eason stores exist throughout the island of Ireland. Eason is also a major Irish distributor of newspapers and magazines, both in the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland. The chain is headquartered in Dublin and employees over 1,800 staff. The company, which is privately held, had a profit of €9.7m in 2003 on a turnover of €372m. Recently, the company has moved into franchising, with a number of new retail units operating independently under the eason banner. Most of these are located in shopping centres or smaller towns that do not already have an existing eason shop. The current Eason Director is Gordon Bolton.
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[edit] Northern Ireland division
Eason's division in Northern Ireland is called "Eason and Son (N.I.) Ltd" with this division being the densest (28 branches - 48% of the company's total stores in the smallest area). This is partly due to the takeover of the company "N.P.O. UK Ltd" which specilised in stationery. Many former NPO stores have not been refitted to date. However, Eason has maintained a fairly good colour balance and uniformity between branches.
[edit] Technical
Eason tills use "APS PayPoint" software which is used on dedicated ePOS hardware manufactured by Epson however some ex. NPO branch use PayPoint on standard pc's running Windows 2000 (some are Windows 98) manufactured by HP. Previous to this, NPO-used software running on Mac OS System 7.
Credit Card hardware is separate from the tills and is manufactured by Ingenico Fortronic. This system is very slow and inconvient as staff have to usually share few units amounst loads of tills and since they use standard dial up connections. This has, however saved Eason money on implementing ISDN hardware and Credit Card software into PayPoint.
Eason has now integrated credit card processing into its tills in some of its stores using the dedicated Epson hardware. Tills using standards PC's on Windows 98/2000 have also been upgraded. Bigger branches host a Credit Card authorisiation server where smaller shops connect to it via a VPN tunnel.
Since 2005, eason has also integrated the automated selling of gift cards into tills, using similar technology; the giftcard system uses PayPlus software also developed by APS. Staff can now swipe giftcards to top them up and also use them as payment for all items in Eason stores throughout Ireland.
EROS (Eason Remote Ordering System) is the company's system for ordering books and stationery. EROS is a Microsoft Windows application which as well as ordering, allows staff to check stock on books for customers. The EROS database stores all books currently available at the Eason warehouse in Dublin as well as holding stock counts for the respective shop. This database is stored on a server located in each store. Shop staff can place orders on client machines located on the shop floor; this updates the EROS database's "books waiting to be ordered" list. The manager will authroise the order at the earliest opportunity and send the order to the warehouse via a 56k modem which dials directly to the warehouse server; at the same time, an update may be executed which updates the shop server's database and synchronizes it with books available at the warehouse. EROS does not make use of a pernament connection to the internet or any ISP as the order processing/update is done directly via the PSTN network to the warehouse server; consequently, this results in EROS not being able to check stock in other shops.
Eason's internal phone system vary between different shops. For example, ex-NPO shops tend to use Panasonic A309 telephone systems but the shops that were always Eason tend to use BT meridian systems. Most shops have broadband which enables each shop to authorise credit card transactions, gift cards as well as administrative tasks.
[edit] Distribution and wholesale services
Easons have a newspaper and magazine distribution service in Ireland which competes with John Menzies, Wholesale News and Newspeed. Eason delivers newspapers and magazines to its own stores as well as other non-Eason stores. Popular newspapers that Eason distributes include The Daily Mail, The Daily Express, The Daily Sport, The Guardian, London Times, The Daily Telegraph and many others. Eason also delivers The Belfast Telegraph to its own stores only within Northern Ireland.
Eason is the official dealer in Ireland for Club Stationary which is sold throughout its own stores as well as many other non-Eason stores.
Eason also has a book wholesale division selling books in bulk to many shops; Eason book division is used in all of its own stores. Eason is probably the largest book distributor on the island, other book wholesalers include Argosy Books and Gill and Macmillan Distribution ( both Dublin based).
[edit] List of divisions, ownership of other companies and acquisitions
- Eason Retail Division - currently based in Crumlin, but due to move to an integrated book and magazine retail warehouse in 2007.
- Eason Book Wholesale Division - currently based in Santry, north county dublin.
- Club Stationery wholesale
- Eason News Distribution Division - based in Dublin, and outside Cork City Newsbrothers. Newsbrothers , a subsidiary company of Eason, are responsible for newspaper and magazine distribution in the Munster region. Also, a small news warehouse facility is located at Mervue in Galway city.
- 2 South African Firms selling phone top-ups and pre-paid electricity (Eason Electronic)
- 52 British Bookshops & Stationers outlets in south-east England. Contributed a large share of corporate profits in 2005.
- N.P.O. UK Ltd. (now all rebranded Eason)
- Reads bookstores (still called Reads with a new store due to open in Botanic Avenue in Belfast in 2007.) These stores, acquired in 2004, are primarily discount stores, but also incorporate the stationery and instant printing elements of Reads business. The two original Reads stores were on Nassau Street in Dublin 2 ( located beside the Eason Fred Hanna's bookshop , itself acquired by Eason from the Hanna family in 1999), and a branch on Patrick street in Cork city.
[edit] See also
[edit] External links
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