Company name: Xsilva Systems Inc.

Headquarters: Montreal, Quebec, Canada

Founded: 2005

Company overview:
Xsilva Systems makes a comprehensive suite of retail tools tailored to the Mac platform under its LightSpeed brand. Company founder and CEO Dax Dasilva developed the concept for a point-of-sale (POS) solution specifically for the Mac while working on a separate in-house POS solution for a Mac retail chain in Montreal. Xsilva has continued to work with the Mac and general retail communities to ensure LightSpeed has the features and functionality that give it broad appeal across the retail sector. LightSpeed is sold through a channel that includes 275 resellers in 23 countries, as well as through Xsilva’s direct sales team.

Technology:
The LightSpeed portfolio includes a number of easy-to-use retail tools intended to help retailers accelerate growth and manage their business more effectively. Its front counter point of sale solution features a stunning interface ideal for high-speed scanner-driven retail, with a Cover Flow technology that helps reduce errors and incidents of fraud by allowing users to browse customers and products graphically. Using the intuitive and visually rich look and feel made popular by Apple’s iTunes, LightSpeed’s back office functions are designed to make managing a retail business as easy as click, drag and drop. Add-on module LightSpeed Web Store allows retailers to generate and maintain a fully customizable PHP- and CSS-based e-commerce site from their LightSpeed database.

LightSpeed’s tools include extensive quoting, ordering and invoicing capabilities, label and barcode printing, reporting, inventory management, customer profiling and tracking, credit-card processing, gift cards, multi-store lookups and stock transfers. It exports to popular accounting software packages from Intuit and MYOB for both Mac and Windows, and integrates seamlessly with Intuit’s QuickBooks 2009 for Mac.

Target customers:
Single-store, small-to-medium-sized retail chains, and online retailers across a broad spectrum of verticals in the retail sector.

Executive team:
Dax Dasilva, Founder, CEO and VP of development
Ian Haugh, Director of Sales
Ian Marsh, Director of Technology and Services
Brad Malmberg, Training Manager

Market statistics and trends:
According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the total sales for the U.S. retail industry in 2007, including food service and automotive, was $4.48 trillion.

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, e-commerce sales are growing faster than overall retail sales. In the second quarter of 2008, e-commerce sales were up 9.5 per cent from the year before, while overall retail sales were up only 2.5 per cent. However, there remains huge opportunity for growth in online retailing, as e-commerce accounted for only 3.3 per cent of overall retail sales in the second quarter of 2008, or about US$34.6 billion.

A recent economic report from Deloitte, “2008 Industry Outlook: A look around the corner,” warned of the challenge facing the U.S. retailing industry due to fears about the housing market, tightening credit and cost of living increases. Among the recommendations to retailers to help them weather the storm was to embrace multichannel retailing to reach consumers through additional channels such as e-commerce, improve the customer experience and customer loyalty, and manage inventory more efficiently to improve cash flow. LightSpeed and LightSpeed Web Store assist with all these issues.

The Mac platform continues to increase its U.S. market share in terms of overall PC vendor shipments, according to an October 2008 report from analyst firm Gartner. The report showed that Apple Inc. saw almost 30 per cent year-over-year growth from the third quarter of 2007, moving its market share from 7.7 per cent to 9.5 per cent. In the third quarter of 2008 alone, Apple shipped 1,645,000 Macs.

LightSpeed has attracted thousands of users since the release of version 1.0 in the fall of 2005, surpassing the adoption rates of competing retail systems available on the market. Over the past 18 months, Xsilva System’s monthly revenue run rate has almost doubled.

The majority of LightSpeed users have been retailers looking for their first point-of-sale solution.