EZcart’s convenient design keeps company profits rolling

BOULDER – Have you ever grabbed one of those little plastic handbaskets with the wire handles at the grocery store?

Sure you have. In fact, studies show that as many as 70 percent of shoppers use them. Grocery stores introduced them for the customer who just needed a few items – the quick in-and-out shopper.

But there’s a problem.

Grocery stores are in business to sell as much stuff as they can, but when the baskets get full, the studies also show customers stop shopping and head to the checkout – not exactly what the Safeways and the King Soopers of the retail world prefer.

One Boulder-based company believes it has created a solution. It’s called the EZcart, a basket cart that bridges the gap between handbaskets and regular carts.

The EZcart turns single-basket customers into double-basket customers, according to Michel Walter, president of VersaCart Systems Inc., the company that created the EZcart.
Duble-basket customers can mean double the sales. Evidently, he has convinced a lot of grocery store managers and other retailers of that as well.

Today VersaCart sells carts to thousands of customers nationwide and around the globe. Customers include Whole Foods, Wild Oats, Safeway, Kroger, Vitamin Cottage and Ace Hardware. The baskets also are used in warehouses (Amazon.com uses them in their fulfillment houses), libraries and industrial facilities.

“We sell to everybody and anybody,” Walter said.

Back in the ’90s, Walter started his own office supply company, Daily Office Supplies.
While working there, he took notice of a problem his customers were having. They were carrying around large awkward carts while shopping.

Then he remembered a little cart he had when he lived in South Africa and called up a friend who still lived there and had him send one over. “I showed it around to some people, and they liked it,” he said.

He put it to the test and conducted some research with Whole Foods customers in Boulder.

“We did a test in the store and got customers’ feedback on how they liked it, any improvements they felt were needed, what was wrong with it,” Walter said.

From that feedback he developed a design spec and took it to an international designer in South Africa. A few weeks later the first EZcart was born.

“There was a lot of preparatory work in the beginning,” Walter mentioned.

In 2002, he landed his first major order from Whole Foods, which wanted 100 carts.
Then McGuckin Hardware ordered 50.

Walter got excited and ordered 1,000 more to be made even though there were no more orders in the pipeline. But he got lucky and they came, even before the 1,000 carts were delivered to the United States.

Initially, all the carts were made in South Africa, but in 2004 Walter began having the carts made in China.

Today, every Whole Foods in Colorado have the carts. VersaCart also sells in Australia, Europe, South America and South Africa. Walter estimates that about 15 percent of his business comes from foreign markets.

Walter said he has eight employees in Boulder – mostly salespeople – and an outsource distribution center in Tennessee.

“We’re growing really well, 40 to 50 percent a year, by developing very useful products,” he said.

VersaCart also offers hardware and retail shopping carts, baskets and totes. “We’re a small player with many other big players; about five large established companies,” Walter said.

He believes he’s been able to compete strictly on the design of his carts.

“There’s efficiency of space usage, they take up very little room in the back rooms,” he said.

Walter says VersaCart worked extensively with owners and managers in all types and sizes of business to develop several cart products. So far, the top-selling product is a tossup between EZcart and the Express 6000.

VersaCart has developed two proprietary ranges of products under the brands of EZcart and EZtote as well as Cart Corrals and attachments to support those ranges.

The EZtote brand has four series of carts: the EZtote200, EZtote300, EZtote400 and the EZtote500 series with a total of 10 different styles. These carts are designed for handling a wide range of products including cartons, totes, tubs and restaurant bus tubs. VersaCart Systems carries retail equipment, including regular shopping carts.

Walter is bullish on the future and mentioned it looks as if the company can keep up the pace of growth it has created. “People really like our products,” he said.

His long-term goal?

“I don’t know,” he said. “For now, I just want to build a strong company and make good products. We’ve had very good success in the hardware business and grocery chains and natural product chains, so we’ll see where it goes.”