Leesburg, Virginia, April 21, 2009 - Showroom Technology announced today that Homemakers, a wholly-owned unit in the Berkshire Hathaway family of businesses, drove more traffic into its 215,000 square foot store using the SHOW/PRO kiosk-based scan event than at any other time in the past year. Leveraging its investment in seven Showroom Technology SHOW/PRO kiosks, Homemakers embraced the new 360° Marketing program, introduced late last year by Showroom Technology and its marketing services business partner, Mail America.

The kiosks run promotional events to help retailers drive consumers into the store and up to the kiosk so as to collect their personal data for marketing and credit application services. Mail America’s Webtrax Plus software enables barcoded print promotions to work seamlessly with the SHOW/PRO kiosk system. The barcode scan events can even be insured for up to one million dollars, enabling retailers to get creative and develop promotions that catch the attention of today’s cautious consumer.

The Homemakers scan event offered an instant win of multiple prizes, featuring a grand prize and different purchase discount percentages as secondary prizes that every customer received. The promotion engine offered Homemakers the ability to create secret and flexible prizes in order to create more excitement around the event. This, in turn, enticed a high volume of consumers into the store. On the peak weekend day of the event, Homemakers had so much foot traffic that consumers were lined up to scan at the kiosk. As a result of the scan and registration process, the 360° Marketing system showed Homemakers, real-time, data related to the nearly 5,000 consumers interacting with the kiosks.

"We are very pleased with the performance of the tandem promotional campaign between our in-store kiosks from Showroom Technology and the direct mail piece from Mail America," said Suzy Emmack, marketing director for Homemakers. "The ability to have a customer-specific mailer that drove people to the store and to scan at the kiosk to see their winnings was an excellent way to get current and new customers into the store. The interactive nature of this promotional piece was unlike any other. It is definitely something to repeat."

Homemakers is planning a follow-on promotion to coincide with the grand opening of its newly renovated and expanded store this summer. They will also add more SHOW/PRO kiosks to handle the large number of consumers interacting with the kiosks. "The scan event ended up as one of our best promotions of any kind for both foot traffic and sales in the last year, in spite of the down economy," stated Rick Greth, Homemakers’ information technology director. "By having the consumer come into the store with the promotion, it gave us unique insight and instant feedback as to the consumer’s reaction to the offer, a future benefit as new offers are considered."