An Interview with Elie Y. Katz, Founder & CEO of National Retail Solutions

National Retail Solutions (NRS) provides affordable point-of-sale (POS) solutions to more than 20,000 independent brick-and-mortar retailers across the United States. The company was founded in 2015 and is headquartered in Newark, New Jersey. NRS offers a range of POS hardware and software solutions, including an all-in-one POS system that includes a dual-screen register, barcode scanner, locked cash drawer, thermal receipt printer, and payment acceptance capabilities. The company also offers a suite of software applications, including NRS Pay credit card processing integration, sales, inventory, and user management, e-commerce, loyalty, and more. Overall, National Retail Solutions aims to provide small and medium-sized retailers with the powerful technology tools and resources they need to compete and succeed. NRS Digital Media allows advertisers and agencies to reach both retailers and store patrons with contextually relevant digital ads served before and during sales transactions. NRS Insights leverages scan data to identify industry trends and help brands drive distribution and demand. National Retail Solutions’ family of products and services neatly tie together a broad retail ecosystem.

Candid Q&A with Elie Y. Katz, Founder & CEO

Q. Why was the company set up?

The original mission of National Retail Solutions was to help independent retailers persevere in a highly competitive arena. That same mission is what continues to drive our decisions and innovations to this day. Ultimately, our top priority is to tend to the needs of retailers, and the features we continually release reflect that. Whether the individual business is an independent brick-and-mortar storefront exclusively or is diversifying its offerings with online sales, our goal is always to facilitate them in doing so as effectively as possible. That’s why, as the world and the retail landscape move more towards a virtual setting, we innovate and adapt to keep up with the times and help our retailers do the same.

Q. How do you inspire your staff to continue to innovate?

At NRS, our team is highly dedicated to supporting independent business owners and helping them succeed. To begin with, we hire employees who share our passion and commitment to bettering the experiences of our retailers. We understand how hard brick-and-mortar storeowners work each day and night. We understand their challenges as big-box stores and online platforms threaten their core business. We are passionate about helping our retailers grow their revenue by providing them with powerful tools. To begin with, we hire employees who share our passion and commitment to bettering the experiences of our retailers. We understand how hard brick-and-mortar storeowners work each day and night. We understand their challenges as big-box stores and online platforms threaten their core business. We are passionate about helping our retailers grow their revenue by providing them with powerful tools. And we want hard-working store owners to feel safe and secure knowing that our offerings are helping them and that we are here to help them.

Simultaneously, we are a fast-growing company, and each day yields something new and exciting. Most of our employees are self-motivated, proactive, and enthusiastic team players. So our business is not just about helping our customers. It's not just about fast-tracked development of new products and services. It's also about camaraderie with shared values within a highly supportive environment.

Q. How do you see retail technology evolving over the next decade?

We keep a close eye on emerging trends and adapt our products and services to help our retailers stay on top of technology. COVID-19 served as a catapult for e-commerce, which was already in the arena previously but became a front-and-center necessity during the pandemic. For brick-and-mortar retailers to stay afloat despite reduced foot traffic, many — but not all — turned to e-commerce as a secondary revenue stream. Ecommerce technology (including home delivery) will continue to expand and evolve with the industry. Web technology and e-commerce apps for smart devices will likely expand in many directions.

Also, retail technology needs to closely keep up with ever-changing needs in the industry it serves. For example, a rise in crime, particularly in urban and ethnic communities across the USA, has many retailers scrambling for security solutions. So we built a patented panic alarm button into the POS system, which, when activated, connects with local police. And with the current introduction of AI into all spheres, technology providers will likely continue to incorporate and leverage the power of AI to improve their products and services.

Q. You mentioned a new panic alarm button. Are there any other new features on the horizon?

We just announced three new features for our POS network that will benefit our small retailer partners, especially in regard to ecommerce and delivery services. Find My Biz is a new service that will be particularly powerful, as it helps these retailers with their virtual discoverability. With the Find My Biz feature, small businesses and independent retailers have a single place where they can input all their business information, which then appears in searches across the internet, as well as a series of complementary features.

Then Manage My Reviews service is an add-on to Find My Biz, which gives businesses the option to have real people respond to online reviews, thus improving consumer engagement. Online reviews can make or break a business, and we have found that responding to customer reviews with personalized, human responses can be a tremendous help. And lastly, the new NRS Loyalty Program provides these retailers with a platform for automating customer loyalty points, discounts, and more.

Q. What challenges have you faced when making your digital transformations?

We've put a lot of emphasis into helping our brick-and-mortar retailers expand comfortably and affordably into ecommerce. It's been difficult for busy retailers, especially for those with limited resources and language barriers, to take on and keep up with technology. Our POS system software interface is built to be user-friendly for any cashier, so it appeals intuitively, while offering high-tech tools at the fingertips.

Our strongest challenge is packaging these tools into a product that is easy to use and understand even for retailers who don't speak English as strongly. And now with the current ecommerce trends, our development team is constantly building new product features into our POS for offering ecommerce and connecting the POS with that platform, to provide our B2B customers a competitive edge while keeping costs down. We are challenged regularly to identify the current needs of our customer base and keep our technology offerings current in an arena that is constantly changing.

Q. Where do you see the company a couple years from now?

As the market continues to shift, NRS will continue to adapt to that shift, ensuring that our retailer partners are able to function in an ever-changing world. This means we will stay on top of changing trends and will stay ahead of the curve with innovative technology that gives retailer the competitive edge they need to survive and thrive.

About Elie Y. Katz

Elie Y. Katz is founder & CEO of National Retail Solutions (NRS). Seven years ago, he founded National Retail Solutions (NRS) with the mission of helping independent businesses compete and thrive. Katz is additionally currently Deputy Mayor of Teaneck, NJ, having served previously as Mayor. He also manages real estate properties (commercial, mixed use and land) and food establishments (owned thirteen food businesses, including bakeries, restaurants, and take-out). Katz possesses a keen business savvy, with an understanding of the value of investment, generation of revenue and business growth leadership from creation and acquisition, through exit.

National Retail Solutions (NRS), a subsidiary of IDT (NYSE: IDT), is a provider of the NRS point of sale network (nrsplus.com) and NRS Pay credit card processing (nrspay.com), which service many thousands of independent retailers across the US. NRS Digital Media (nrsdigitalmedia.com) offers advertisers eye-level marketing impact at the point of purchase, via the customer-facing NRS POS screens. NRS Insights (nrsinsights.com) provides data to help manufacturers and CPGs keep a thumb on the pulse of the retail arena. Additional NRS offerings include NRS Petro (nrspetro.com), NRS Funding business cash advance, EBT Unlimited!, eCommerce, payroll services and more.

“Our POS system software interface is built to be user-friendly for any cashier, so it appeals intuitively, while offering high-tech tools at the fingertips.”