It looks like a business-news Web site, but Infopoint, a Thomson Reuters’ service, plays on a digital sign in the lobby of the company’s Eagan campus. A stream of continually updated articles appears on the flat-screen monitor along with local weather conditions. Stock-market indices are displayed across the bottom of the screen.
For information giant Thomson Reuters, Infopoint is a branding and promotional tool. It appears on about 300 such signs in 44 countries (in several languages). Some signs are in Thomson Reuters offices, others are in the offices of banking companies or at sites such as the Chicago Mercantile Exchange; at least two, in London and Singapore, are outdoor Jumbotrons.
Infopoint also plays in the Minnetonka office-park lobby of Wireless Ronin Technologies, Inc. But the digital sign there is meant to demonstrate what the company does.
The same is true of screens in Wireless Ronin’s conference room that show a menu from KFC (Kentucky Fried Chicken). About 150 KFC stores have replaced their plastic menu boards with digital ones. Also in the conference room is an interactive touch screen that walks shoppers through the features and specs of vehicles sold at Chrysler, Dodge, and Jeep dealerships.
Wireless Ronin, with about 55 employees in Minnetonka and 30 more in Windsor, Ontario, sells software that runs digital signs for those clients. It also maintains and manages the signs—6,500 screens for 190 clients—from a small operations center at its Minnetonka offices. Thomson Reuters’ screens qualify Wireless Ronin as a “global” business, though almost all of its sign networks are in North America.
Its stock (Nasdaq: RNIN) is publicly traded. But Wireless Ronin, 10 years old, is still in investment and start-up mode. In 2008, it posted a net loss of $20.7 million on $7.4 million in revenue. In the first three quarters of 2009, it showed a net loss of $8 million on $3.5 million in revenue. It has yet to achieve profitability. But the company’s executives say, and some analysts agree, that Wireless Ronin could be poised for much bigger things.
Samurai with a Cell Phone?
The company name is an anachronism that has little to do with the current business. Wireless Ronin was founded in 2000 by a small group of engineers, none of them on the current executive team. They were working with seed money to develop software for a handheld wireless device to be used in health care. Some of the engineers were martial-arts enthusiasts. A ronin is a masterless samurai. Hence, Wireless Ronin.
