Has The 7-Eleven Inc. Rollout Got Funding?
Adrian J Cotterill, Editor-in-Chief
Back in November 2009 we wrote “Our guess is that this (announcement) will NEVER emerge as a nationwide deployment at 7-Eleven – at best it’s likely to be a set of regional / local deployments where the screens would appear only in the 7-Eleven stores owned by the more creative and innovative franchisees“.
However the rumour mill in the US over the last few weeks has gone into overdrive and is that the Digital Display Networks (DDN) folks who are providing all of the turn-key services, supervising installation, content production and advertising sales AND paying for the whole network deployment with 7-Eleven (yes they will need deep pockets and lots and lots of money) may well have got some money together to roll some of the network out – apart from some network tests with Chilin Technology a year or so ago we know of no official 7-Eleven rollouts.
Rumour number 1 is that NEC are involved. We’d discount that. In our experience NEC are much more conservative than that.
Rumour number 2 involves RMG but “we’d be amazed if RMG has enough money” as we said when talking about about the rumour that RMG were poised to buy PRN and we’d simply say the same again here.
Our feeling still is that this is a network that will not get off the ground.
The original asking price to buy into this opportunity was USD 70 million but we now hear that they are looking for half of that. If anyone has USD 35 million to spare then I am sure Darren and Dave would like a call.
July 1st, 2010 at 14:25 @642
It’s a shame for 7-11. There is tremendous opportunity for them if they were willing to invest in their own success.
July 1st, 2010 at 14:54 @662
The issue is that they have too much of a scattered approach for implementation. CRI, Linden Group, who knows who’s engineering and building. It is a shame…but I agree that this one will always linger and never fly.
July 1st, 2010 at 17:04 @753
Ok, I give. it’s me. They promised me free Slurpees for life.
Running the numbers now to see if that actually works out for me.