Two-and-a-half years ago Bryan Eagle III left France Telecom to wager his ambitions in the wireless data market. Today, he can count Coca-Cola as his premiere client.
Skywire L.P., led by Eagle and backed by Columbia Capital Corp. and Pittway Corp., last month announced signing a multi-year contract with Coca-Cola Bottling Co. Consolidated of Charlotte, N.C., for Skywire to outfit the bottler with its Vendview wireless remote managing system.
Skywire, based in Memphis, Tenn., secured the contract through the Coca-Cola corporation, which acts as a franchisee to the regional bottlers, said Eagle. “Coke said `let’s take it (Vendview) to our largest, most sophisticated markets,”‘ recalls Eagle. “Coke blessed us to go talk to its bottlers*…*It’s an approved product.”
Vendview allows Coke to determine status information, which contributes to increased vending sales. Drivers are provided with simplified routes and information on which products to load on their trucks each day, the machines they need to visit and the variety of products to stock in each machine. Vendview also facilitates cash accountability by tabulating how much money a driver should accrue from a given route and reduces lost sales by immediately signalling a column or coin jam in a particular machine. Vendview maximizes vending sales by compiling data on the consumption patterns of a particular machine so a driver can stock products proportionally. Consumption data also allows a company to optimize pricing and marketing of particular products.
Prior to Skywire, Eagle worked with Cylix Communications, a Memphis, Tenn.-based data subsidiary of France Telecom, which designed and operated specialized data communications networks for domestic and international companies, said Eagle. Here Eagle first promoted venturing into wireless data, where he identified a hole in the market: fixed data monitoring applications.
Eagle received endorsement by Washington D.C., venture capital firm Columbia Capital, and together they partnered with Pittway, a holding company principally comprised of security systems manufacturer Ademco Security Corp.
Ademco was a perfect match for Skywire, explained Eagle, as it had technology, equipment and a network-designed for security applications-that could be used for other applications. As a network for transmitting alarm signals, Ademco’s AlarmNet network previously carried very little traffic, but had large capacity.
The network operates at 928 MHz, spectrum allocated in the 1980s for telemetry services as multiple address system, or MAS, said Eagle.
The Vendview system is configured with three fundamental components: vending machine hardware, data networks and map-based data and route management software. Skywire spent more than two years designing and building the Windows-based computer software to interpret and report status data from vending machines.
The network and hardware, which includes a digital interface board and a radio or modem for each vending machine, was derived from Ademco. In newer machines, a controller is built in which captures product, cash and alarm information. An additional piece must be installed in older machines to gain this information.
The vending machine data is transmitted to a personal computer at the particular vending company’s distributor using a variety of data networks, said Skywire, including Ardis, RAM Mobile Data USA L.P., AlarmNet and Cellular Digital Packet Data systems. Skywire is able to integrate these networks, said Eagle, and delivers a single connection to the distributor.
When Skywire created Vendview the intent was to create a suite of hardware and software, or “firmware” as Eagle puts it, capable of being modified for development of technology and products for its other monitoring applications including security systems, utilities, oil and gas, billboards, railroad crossings, elevators and other applications.
To create this flexibility, monitoring devices must be flexible from the remote side. Hardware must be powerful, said Eagle, yet the data transmitted needs to be condensed to maximize network capacity.
Coca-Cola of Charlotte, N.C., is the second largest Coke distributor and operates in a region comprising of North Carolina, South Carolina, parts of Virginia, West Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee, Mississippi, Alabama, Florida and Georgia. Eagle said Skywire is working toward domestic and international contracts with additional Coke bottlers and other beverage bottlers.
