Is Your Desktop Printer Reliable?

Retailers know that success is dependent on several things, including managing costs, maximizing profits, and getting the best ROI from tools and devices used on a daily basis. So, when a device such as a thermal bar code printer is critical to the success of your business, its continuous reliability is of the utmost importance. Kirkwood Mountain Resort, located in the Sierra Nevada mountain range in California, operates as a ski resort during winter months. During the summer months, the resort offers mountain biking, ropes courses, horseback riding, and more. Crucial to the resort's business is the sale of ski lift tickets, as the ski lift carries skiers and mountain bikers and their bikes to the top of the mountain.

So, when the resort's thermal bar code printers used to print ski lift tickets started to jam, creating long lines in the ski ticket queue, customer service was jeopardized. Tyler Waltz, systems manager at Kirkwood Mountain Resort, was tasked with finding a new line of thermal bar code printers to solve the issue.

"Ski lift tickets are the key to Kirkwood Mountain Resort's business," says Waltz. "Without tickets, customers cannot ride the ski lift to the top of the mountain to ski or bike back down it. Customers do not want to, nor should they have to, wait in long lines for their tickets because of a printer jam." The resort operates 40 thermal bar code printers at three ticket stations located throughout the resort. The main ticket stations are indoors and operate several printers per station, while other ticket stations are outdoors. Outdoor ticket stations typically operate just one printer per station.

Cumbersome Form Factor Makes Substitution Difficult
During winter months, printer jams at outdoor ticket stations caused customers to wait in the cold for up to 10 minutes. If a printer jammed at an indoor location that operated more than one printer, employees could go to another computer and print to another printer. However, that employee was then tasked with contacting an in-house IT technician or the printer manufacturer to fix the printer. Printers with complicated problems had to be sent back to the manufacturer for repair. "Not only did our old printers jam or break often, but also they were very big and very heavy," says Waltz. "Transporting them to the shipping area was exhausting, and loading ticket paper into the old printers was a difficult process."

The printer's unreliability and cumbersome form factor coupled with the concern for customer service led the resort to replace its existing printers. Based on a recommendation from Siriusware, the resort's POS software provider, Kirkwood Mountain Resort purchased and installed CognitiveTPG Advantage LX desktop thermal bar code printers. "We did not do a complete overhaul of the old printers," says Waltz. "Since this purchase is a capital expenditure, we were only budgeted to buy a certain amount." The Advantage LX's small footprint (4 inches x 4 inches) enables Waltz to transfer printers among the other ticket stations if need be. Printer jams and breaks are not an issue with the Advantage LX printers.

Increase Printing Speed
Years later, Kirkwood Mountain Resort replaced the remaining original printers with CognitiveTPG Advantage DLX desktop thermal bar code printers. The Advantage DLX printer delivers label-out speed at 5 inches-per-second and is equipped with USB-A host technology. At the time of its Advantage DLX purchase, the resort did not replace the existing Advantage LX printers. Waltz expects to upgrade all Advantage LX printers to Advantage DLX printers in the near future.

The new printers have enabled Kirkwood Mountain Resort to decrease problems related to faulty printers. Ticket-printing speed has decreased from 10 seconds to 5 seconds. Also, wait time in ski lift queues has decreased as tickets are printed without paper jams.