Till Maker Hits Euro Jackpot

Ka-ching. Ka-ching. Ka-ching.

At least one company is cashing in on the impending arrival of Europe’s common currency--the continent’s biggest manufacturer of cash register tills, which have to be replaced when the euro becomes legal tender in 12 countries of the European Union next January.

The injection-molded plastic trays used by bank tellers, department store cashiers, grocery clerks and ticket sellers have been a reliable niche product of the tiny Inkiess company since founder Walter Kiessling got the idea to standardize coin and currency storage in 1935.

Since then, the company in the sleepy Britz suburb of Berlin has sold its currency-customized wares in 30 countries to millions of businesses, from huge banks to humble street vendors.

Unlike U.S. cash registers, which hold coins of any size loosely in basins, European cashiers tend to use trays molded to hold each denomination in stacks and staggered so the totals can be calculated at a glance.

Because the euro coins will be of different size and thickness from the currencies now in use, the Britz manufacturer--which is believed to have supplied as much as two-thirds of the European market--has had to redesign its products for the 12 euro countries.

That means a bonanza for this year, with sales in the first quarter almost equal to all of 2000 and orders piling up so fast that Inkiess has had to hire temporary workers and move to round-the-clock production.

“We really have no idea how many orders we’ll have by the end of the year. It’s such a crazy time that we have no experience to guide us,” said Ute Tuscher, an export and marketing director who has worked for Inkiess for 23 years. “We’ve been trying to get our big customers to decide what they need well before the end of the year, but we know we’ll still be getting panicked calls in mid-December.”

Inkiess--named for the founder’s teenage daughter, Ingeborg Kiessling--has been producing the same size coin holders in Germany since the last major monetary reform in 1948, when the sturdy deutschemark replaced the reichsmark that had become virtually worthless in the impoverished aftermath of World War II.

Because the bulk of the company’s sales over the 66 years it has been in business were one-time encounters with small- and medium-sized sales operations, there has been no tradition of maintaining customer files except for the big banks and department store chains that were frequent buyers, Tuscher said. That has made it impossible to estimate how many of the company’s products are in use and potentially in need of replacement.

The company already has orders for 1.5 million items from its line of 200-plus products, which range in price from less than $1 to more than $800. Inkiess sales manager Fritz Klein forecast far more volume than the company’s last major market boost--the 1990 currency union between eastern and western Germany that brought sales of nearly $7 million.

That foreshadows considerable profit for a company with fewer than 50 employees and low overhead. Little of the production is automated after the initial melting and molding, with workers doing the cutting, smoothing, labeling and packaging by hand.

None of the euro coins or bills is available to businesses yet, even for purposes of familiarizing cashiers with the new currency. The first “starter kits” containing euro coins will go on sale in September, which is when most businesses plan to begin training their sales staffs and making adjustments to both hardware and software at the cash register.

Even Inkiess hasn’t been given the currency. The European Bank in Frankfurt has handed over the precise dimensions, however, so the company can get started on its new tills.

Among Inkiess’ new products is a big-selling transition tray that allows cashiers to store both euro and national coins by separating the trays with movable plastic dividers. The two-month overlap between when the euro is introduced and when it becomes the exclusive currency in circulation March 1 is the most traumatizing aspect of the monetary revolution, salesclerks say.

The Intercoin-8 trays sell for about $16 each, which some store managers are beginning to see as a worthwhile investment despite the products’ short-lived usefulness because they may calm the fears of cash handlers dreading the confusing transition.

“It’s just horrible that at my age I should have to endure all this,” wailed 52-year-old Hilde Merker, a cashier at the Edeka supermarket in the Bonn suburb of Hangelar. “Anyway, no one even wants to get rid of the deutschemark. This was all decided by politicians, and everyone is very angry about it.”

Wolfgang Blasch, who is responsible for euro conversion issues for the Metro department store chain, which has stores in more than 20 countries and 20,000 cash registers in Germany alone, said the Duesseldorf-based company is contemplating a sizable purchase of the transition trays in hopes they will limit confusion when 16 coins and 13 bank notes will simultaneously be in play.

“A very important aspect of this transition for our company is that the cashiers have a good introduction to the new cash,” Blasch said.

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Reane Oppl in The Times’ Bonn Bureau contributed to this report.