Wireless carts to the rescue! Analysis/Commentary A small company in Canada called PowerCart, Inc. has invented a way to help retail stores open faster and serve customers more effectively. It makes wireless carts that serve as cash-wrap desks, labeling and logistics stations, point-of-care wagons, and Internet kiosks. Large store chains constantly develop new stores and close unproductive ones. In new stores, often, merchandise is in place, staff available, but the cash-wrap desks and electrical outlets aren't ready. PowerCart's wireless battery-powered push carts work as instant points of sale, mobile printing and labeling stations, or even as barcode scanning stations on loading docks. Elsewhere, the carts serve as Internet kiosks to tap a store's internal network. In a health environment like a hospital, they can be used to help dispense medicine or measure blood pressure, and then upload relevant data to a central computer by laptop. The carts are equipped with a heavy-duty battery and a wireless connection, a receiver-transmitter that talks to a network by antenna. PowerCart's CEO, Andy Stein, admits that his company goes after "low-hanging fruit:" the carts exploit fluctuating business patterns in a store, or get positioned where sales most frequently occur during a given season. Big retailers have flocked to the little Canadian company. The company started in 1997 when its founders combined two basic technologies -- wireless and batteries -- to create the carts. Big merchants quickly saw how the carts might affect their response to market conditions. Major technology providers collaborated with PowerCart to adapt their equipment to the carts' designs. Now PowerCart plans $7 million in sales by the end of the year. Not bad for a handful of employees and a simple consumer-oriented idea. April 11, 2001