Oriental Market Modernizes Operations with CATAPULT

Pacific Mercantile Company is a regionally renown oriental market on Lawrence Street in Denver, CO located in the high-commerce area known as LODO (lower downtown). Situated among restaurants, antique shops, bookstores, and professional offices, the 10,000 sq. ft. market is just three blocks away from the Coors Baseball Stadium. Pacific Mercantile provides a wide variety of grocery, deli, culinary, and gift items to a culturally diverse clientele, and is very popular among the city's Asian food enthusiasts. Among its marks of distinction, Pacific Mercantile was named "The Best Oriental Market" by Westward Magazine, and was named "One of the Top Six Businesses in Downtown Denver" for 2002. We recently caught up with co-owner Jolie Noguchi, who told us how CATAPULT is helping modernize the nearly 60-year-old family business.

ECRS: Tell us about the history of Pacific Mercantile Co.

Noguchi: George Inai, my grandfather, realized a life-long dream by opening Japan Mercantile Company in Denver just after World War II in 1944. He later changed the name to Pacific Mercantile Company. My grandfather eventually passed the business to my uncle, who later passed it to my mother. Today my two brothers and I run the business together.

ECRS: How did you arrive at CATAPULT as your store solution?

Noguchi: Pacific Mercantile built its reputation of quality service and products on a strong foundation of values and traditions, many of which have remained unchanged over the decades. This is a good thing when it comes to delivering quality products and services to our customers. But this traditional way of thinking prevented us from modernizing our point of sale for many years. After much research and deliberation, we finally decided to install CATAPULT.

ECRS: How is CATAPULT helping Pacific Mercantile streamline its operations?

Noguchi: Our old way of doing inventory, accounting, and ordering was very out of date and was wasting many hours of valuable time. =CATAPULT's inventory filtering= capabilities let me see my stock in ways that I was never able to before, which is helping immensely with our re-ordering processes. Likewise, CATAPULT's daily and weekly financial reports are helping save many hours in the area of accounting. Also, we sell a lot of foods that don't come with UPC codes, like our selections of Asian-style meats and sushi-ready fish. We use CATAPULT's LabelVision interface to design and print barcodes for such products. Even our more elderly cashiers, who were initially opposed to all this technology, now see the benefits of automation that CATAPULT is bringing us.

Would you recommend CATAPULT to businesses with automation needs like Pacific Mercantile

Noguchi :Definitely. CATAPULT is really helping us streamline our daily operations so that we can focus on the more important task of continuing our long tradition of customer service and quality products.