At RACO Industries, we pride ourselves on using technology, information, and mobile devices to help save you money.  Now we’ve taken it to another level with  MobileCoupons.com.  With this application, you can access thousands of money-saving coupons on your mobile phone.  It’s a great idea that people are starting to talk about, including many news outlets.  WCPO-TV Reporter Larry Shields stopped by our offices to learn more about MobileCoupons.com and also one of the businesses using MobileCoupons.com to target dead times in their restaurants.

And WCPO isn’t the only one to notice.  News 9 in Oklahoma City also included us in a segment on the mobile coupons trend.  These are just the first of many as MobileCoupons.com is adding more businesses and more deals each and every day.  Consumers can find coupon offers easily on their iPhone, Mobile Web, Internet, and the Android and can even share the savings with social networking sites like Facebook & Twitter.  And for merchants, MobileCoupons.com is a great way to market and promote your business to consumers via specials & coupons.

Find out why MobileCoupons.com is a Phone Full Of Savings by downloading our iPhone app, going to the Android Market, visiting m.mobilecoupons.com on your cell phone, or going to our website http://www.mobilecoupons.com/.

2009 was considered rough for many businesses but RACO Industries was there for you creating useful and knowledgeable videos all year long.  In case you missed it, here are 9 of the most helpful RACO videos from 2009.

9. Color Us Impressed
            We spent a lot of time with Epson’s SecurColor TM-C3400 Color Label Printer and it has really made an impact on some of us here at RACO Industries.  We came away impressed with the ability device’s ability to handle high quality, high volume color printing.  We’ve even seen it perform well in the field.  Be sure to keep an eye out for that video coming up in 2010.

8. Green Means Go
            We had many opportunities to see Datalogic’s patented Green Spot technology in action.  As you can imagine, the visual indicator is great for noisy places where you can’t hear the sound that would confirm a good read.  The feature is even ideal for quiet environments where traditional beeps would be disruptive.

7. Troubleshooting Tips
            A regular feature of our videos is looking at common issues that cause our customers trouble.  Whether it’s showing how to cold boot a Motoroloa MC9090, loading a price label gun, installing a light beacon for an RFID beacon, or cleaning a Zebra printhead, our technicians have lots of knowledge to pass on that can save you time and money.

6. Funtime RACO
            It’s not all troubleshooting tips and speeds ‘n feeds in our videos.  Sometimes we like to let our hair down and have a little bit of fun, especially when we’re giving away prizes.  Whether we’re configuring a GPS unit, watching basketball, recreating our logo on an Etch-A-Sketch, or playing Wii ping pong, we enjoy sharing a smile with our customers and vendors.

5. Cassida Currency devices.
            Even those who were bringing in the money could be bogged down by counting and verifying the cash coming in.  Between the 3300 Counterfeit Bill Detector, 6600 Currency Counter, Tiger Dollar Bill Counter, and C100 Coin Counter & Wrapper, Cassida have plenty of devices to help you keep track of the actual cash as it comes through.

4. Happy Birthday, Barcode!
            RACO Industries is definitely a big fan of the barcode so we wanted to celebrate the 35^th anniversary of the first commercial barcode scan in style.  It occurred on June 23, 1974 right up the highway in Troy, Ohio.  We sat down with the original project coordinator about the first time a grocery store had ever been outfitted with this technology. 

3. Intermec Technology Day
            We love to see our vendors face to face.  It’s even more fun when they have new toys to show us.  Back in the summer, Intermec came to Cincinnati for their Technology Day to show off media products such RFID tags, bar code labels, hang tags, shelf talkers and prescription bottle labels as well as solutions for mobile workers such as the CN4 and CN50.

2. Food Labeling
            Unfortunately, health issues concerning food ingredients made the news often in 2009.  In the middle of these concerns, the folks from Monarch stopped by to reinforce how their Country Of Origin Labelling and freshness label solutions can help improve food safety.

Stay tuned as we have plans for more videos top help you in 2010.  And if you have any subjects you would like us to produce a video of, please let us know at giveaway@racoindustries.com and we will try to help you out.  Your video idea will automatically register you for a chance to win a Flip Video Camcorder.Thanks for staying in touch with RACO Industries and have a prosperous new year.

We’re having fun with Twitter and want to share the good time with our followers.  RACO Industries has been using Twitter to announce the arrival of new entries to our video page.  Now we’ll also be using it to help give away prizes.  For example, we tweeted the following challenge:

Look at our Axicon Verifier video & tell us company name on 2^nd label.  Email contest@racoindustries.com & you could win a Flip Camera! 

Here’s the video we were talking about:

And if you get what the company name is referencing, you also earn some kudos in my book. This will probably not be the last contest that we will be having on our feed so don’t forget to sign up to follow our Twitter account and keep an eye out for the latest news, specials, and contests from RACO Industries.

RACO Industries cordially invites you to tour an impressive mobile interactive experience and pick up a complimentary $25 gas card. The Motorola Mobile Briefing Center is coming to Cincinnati and this is your chance to get a sneak peak at products and services that will help you get a leg up on the competition.  Reserve with RACO and we will give you the fuel to get here while Motorola will provide a world of information designed to help you and your company learn more about enterprise mobility, wireless, wireless security, RFID and data collection.

When you step on this travelling showcase, you will find out how you can reduce the cost and complexity of Mobile Office solutions while driving business value and increasing productivity. While visiting the Briefing Center you will experience:

- Interactive demonstrations of Motorola hardware and systems
- Displays and solutions targeting vertical market segments such as transportation and logistics, manufacturing, healthcare, distribution, and more
- Expert’s recommendations and presentations on how solutions are being deployed in different vertical segments
- Technical expertise for your individual applications or solutions
- All of the newest products from Motorola

Personalized Tour if you reserve your spot, otherwise, please come when it is convenient for you.  For additional information and questions, (or if you don’t live near Cincinnati) please contact your RACO Account Manager at 1-800-446-1991.

The hits just keep on coming.  We here at RACO Industries have created over one hundred videos to help demonstrate products, show troubleshooting techniques, and point out solutions to help your business.  These are just another tool we provide to help create solutions that will assist companies with inventory management, asset tracking and other mobility applications while streamlining their business processes. 

The milestone video was for Color Printer Labels and Media for the Epson SecurColor Label Printer.  They’re high gloss labels and label stock specifically designed for the Epson SecurColor Label Printer and available from RACO Industries. The label stock is durable and water resistant and comes in 4 different widths.  Just click on the video and watch to learn more.

There’s so many factors that you need to juggle in order to run a successful business.  Between all the exterior pressures like the economy and your competition, it’s easy to overlook those people in your own building.  But workers are something that the folks here at RACO take pride in focusing on.  Management journal SmartBusiness recently featured RACO Industries President Ted Kolp in an article about developing leaders and employee relations.

“Just showing appreciation is something that I make myself do every day. It can take up to an hour to do that, but it’s an investment in my time that I think is well worth it because you build trust, you build candor, you gather ideas, (employees) take ownership.” 

It’s a mindset that all of the management here shares and has led to RACO being named one of the Top 10 best employers in the state by the Ohio Chamber of Commerce for the second year in a row.

We're pleased to introduce RACO's new web based Barcode Generator.  This easy-to-use tool allows you to create GIF, JPG, BMP and PNG barcode images with the following symbologies:  Codabar, Code 11, Code 128, Code 32, Code 39, Code 93, EAN-13, EAN-8, EAN-99, EAN-Velocity, Industrial, ISBM, UPC, Aztec Code, Semacode, QR Code, PDF417, DataMatrix, and Code 16K.  We plan on adding 20 more symbologies in 2009.  Try it out and let us know what you think.

Sample Barcodes

Welcome to our first post to the RACO Industries blog – The RACO Pulse. We are excited to be able to communicate with our customers, partners and vendors in a more consistent, informative way. Our intention with this blog is to better communicate with you, whether it is related to the products we represent, the services we provide or technology and business trends in the wireless and data collection industry.

We intend to post frequently. Our blog postings will be from our experts in the Technical Services, Business Development and Product Development departments. We believe everyone has something to say every once in a while and now we have an avenue to say it. We will also be searching out other guest bloggers such as vendor representatives and industry experts – so if you want to make a post, just let us know. 

We hope that you find our blog to be useful in some way. And please, if you have something to say, please comment. Because it makes us better at what we do, we would enjoy reading your feedback. Please comment when you have an opinion, or just to let us know you were here. To be notified of new posts, subscribe to RSS feed or sign up for our monthly e-newsletter, which will provide links to the most popular blog postings of the month.

Thank you for reading and stop back often.