March 02, 2010

Vigix rolling out ‘first true vending kiosks

Company announces new vending kiosk to be shown at KioskCom in Vegas. Unit vends physical items like mobile phones but also work for DVD apparently. Selling for $7K to $15K.

Vigix rolling out ‘first true vending kiosks’ | KioskMarketplace

Vigix rolling out ‘first true vending kiosks’

Christopher Hall
• 01 Mar 2010

Vigix is expecting big things from its new vending kiosk.

"We’re looking forward to winning the KioskCom Excellence Awards this year," Vigix Inc. vice president of marketing Ross Elkin said, only half-jokingly, in a recent phone interview.

While there are things called kiosks out there vending product, they’re essentially just bigger, more advanced vending machines, Elkin says.

"What we have is the first true vending kiosk," he said.

ZoomSystems, with its automated retail stores or ZoomShops, and redbox, with its DVD-dispensing kiosks, might take umbrage with that description, but Elkin says the new Vigix kiosk does offer distinct advantages over pervious transactional kiosks.

The new Vigix vending kiosk includes a top-mounted video screen for digital signage and features a slim design, giving it a two-square-foot footprint, Elkin says. The kiosk can be plugged into any 110-volt outlet and offers either cellular-based or hardwired Web access, he says.

So customers can not only buy product at the kiosk, they also could potentially log onto the kiosk owner’s online store to shop, and the top-mounted screen can be used for digital signage which can be controlled by a central Web-based software control system that also allows kiosk owners to view real-times sales and inventory information for the kiosk online.

The kiosks are designed to hold and sell a broad array of goods, but its highest-value application is going to be dispensing items with a certain physical profile in a certain dollar range, like mobile phones, Elkin says. The kiosk also can sell peripheral items, like cellular phone chargers, or digital content. A kiosk owner conceivably could set it up to sell e-readers as well as e-books to load onto it, he says.

The kiosk also can be used to rent or sell DVDs, or small but valuable items like watches, Elkin says. It can hold up to 24 cellular phone-sized boxes or up to 144 DVDs, he says.

read rest of article at KioskMarketplace


Posted by staff at March 2, 2010 10:20 AM