South African retailer Friendly Stores plans to deploy centralized hosted signage solutions at its supermarket and convenience store operations. The retailer will use the Immediate Impact solution, from Royston, England-based Episys.

“We’re currently producing A4 signage on a PC, which is time-consuming and can lead to mistakes,” said Alan Parry, owner of Friendly Stores. “In addition to this, we have a sign writer visit the stores on a weekly basis, to paint the outside of the store with our offers of the week. With the Episys solution, we will produce in-store color signage and this will save us time and money, and ensure that a consistent, branded message is visible to our customers.”

“Immediate Impact [was developed to] deliver the stores with an effective, low-cost signage solution,” said Peter Lewis, marketing director at Episys. “It means any retailer without an IT department, designers or a sophisticated IT package can produce professional-looking signage, crucial for communicating a clear, joined-up proposition to customers.”

The Friendly Group has franchise stores in various retail formats, including Friendly Megamarket, Supermarket and Everyday stores; 7-eleven convenience stores; and Priceclub Discount Supermarkets.