Tell me a little about Athletic Fitters.

DANA: They carry all name brands of athletic footwear and apparel, such as Nike, Reebok, Adidas and Champion. Our niche has been carved by bringing a big town selection, price and service into the smaller and secondary markets. So most of our stores, with the exception of maybe four in the metro area of Minneapolis, are all in rural America -- towns like Des Moines, Colorado Springs and Albuquerque. But we're also located in a lot of smaller towns, like around 15-25,000 people. Some of the smaller stores now do as much volume as the larger stores. The primary target group for us has been the 14-25 year old male, but we cater to everybody. Men's, women's - we also have a good selection for kids and seniors. We don't just carry $100.00 Nike shoes. Of course, that is part of our business too, but we also cater to people that just want a good comfortable shoe for a good price. We have a store manager and an assistant manager and there are typically 5-10 part-time sales workers. It depends upon the size and volume of the stores.

When did Athletic Fitters decide to buy RETAIL PRO?
DANA: It was in November of 1993 - a little more than 4 years ago.

How many stores are on Retail Pro?
DANA: We have 94 stores on the system right now.

What did you do for a system before RETAIL PRO?
DANA: We just had electronic cash registers, with keys on them that corresponded to each vendor. The taxable keys and the non-taxable keys --everything was reconciled manually. It was pretty cumbersome.

What made you decide to buy RETAIL PRO?
DANA: Due to the size of our company and resources that had been available as a privately-held company, we had to first make sure that the system was economical. RETAIL PRO fit that criteria. Even though there are higher-end systems out there, I don't think you necessarily get anymore out of them. RETAIL PRO was also very easy to understand and very easy to use. It also gave us great reporting capabilities to help us continue our growth and analyze what we had in our stores. We thought it was the best value for the money in the packages that we saw. It was economical, yet powerful enough for our needs.

Did you compare RETAIL PRO to other systems?
DANA: I think there were 3 of them in the final running.

Was there any particular reason you went with RETAIL PRO?
DANA: It was just the overall features and that it was easier to understand and more flexible than the other programs. Its reporting capabilities gave us a broader scope or idea of everything going on in our stores. We could analyze our inventory a little closer than I thought we were able to get out of the other systems.

How did RETAIL PRO affect the POS operations and inventory control?
DANA: We are rare in that we don't use a distribution center, even with 94 stores. We drop-ship all of our products from our vendors directly into each store location. It's been very important, however, for us to analyze on-hand and sell-through at any given store at any given time, in order to facilitate inter- store transfers on a periodic basis. Although we did that when we were on a manual system we could not do it at nearly the rate we can with RETAIL PRO, because it took a long time just to analyze what was in stock. RETAIL PRO gives us an instant snapshot of what we have, especially with the aid of our dealer doing customized reports for us. We were able to really tailor the reports to our needs which enabled us to implement effective store-to-store transfers. Not only do we turn our inventory faster at the markdown level, but because we knew what's in stock and what's moving where, we can get transfer orders sent out quicker and get stores to move product around to facilitate sell-through.

What's the most useful aspect of RETAIL PRO, from your point of view?
DANA: First of all, at the point-of-sale, it just makes our check-out process so much faster. We needed to make the transaction process much quicker and that was a very simple process. It gives us very few mistakes when it comes to reconciling our books at night. Electronic registers do not give you the full capability to run XZ reports that a POS system like RETAIL PRO does. It reduces the errors on our end and increases the efficiency tremendously of our staff. The other thing is that it gives us a much better means to analyze our inventory. It shows us how products are doing financially, which gives us a much better grip on our buying. We can break things down so much easier, right down to the last size and the last shoelace. We did not really have that capability prior to going online with RETAIL PRO. The other advantage is that it gives us a better idea on a daily basis, rather than a weekly basis, of what we have in stock. In facilitating transfers prior to RETAIL PRO, the stock might have been a week or two weeks old by the time we finally got around to implementing a transfer order. With RETAIL PRO we know the next day what each store sold and what they have remaining. That makes a world of difference and increases the turnover and the subsequent margin tremendously.

How do the employees like working with RETAIL PRO?
DANA: They like it a lot. They don't have any problems with it at all. It's very easy at the POS and the reports are pretty self-explanatory. It doesn't require a lot of training. At the store level I think that is key, because we have a lot of turnover of retail sales staff. Any retailer will tell you that it is tough to retain non-management staff for a very long period of time. A lot of high school and college-age students take retail jobs and there is a high turnover at that position. You just can't afford to be continually training on a complicated or difficult system. So, it works real well for us because it is very low maintenance and real simple to train somebody on the system.

Do you think it makes them more productive?
DANA: Absolutely! The less time you spend worrying about systems, the more time you can spend concentrating on your job. We pay people to sell products for us, not to spend time behind the counter to figure out shrinkage and that kind of thing.

Was RETAIL PRO a cost effective solution?
DANA: Yes, very much so. It's hard to quantify exactly. There's no way I could probably put into dollars without a couple weeks to really analyze it, but I know for the money we spent on RETAIL PRO over the years we've made up for it many times over and increased profitability. Without a doubt, it gives us a better grip on what's going on in our stores and improves our ability to manage our business accordingly.

How rapid of a return did Athletic Fitters make on the RETAIL PRO investment?
DANA: It's hard to quantify, especially 4 years down the road. But I do know I would say that within 12 months we got everything back out of our system, and since then it's just been gravy.

Thank you very much.