The History of American Metro
The First Building
1975-2005
Here is the store front at 2145 University Ave and the meager staging area. It’s easy to see why we would need more space if we wanted to continue doing large events.
1975-2005
Here is the store front at 2145 University Ave and the meager staging area. It’s easy to see why we would need more space if we wanted to continue doing large events.
2005-2011
The next stop was 1955 University Ave. This gave us a little room to stretch out and grow.
2011-Present
Now located at 609 W. County Rd E, we are looking at a long term home. With a dedicated show room and plenty of space for setting up large events.
American Metro was founded in 1974 under the name Metro Cash Register. Originally located at 2145 University Avenue in St. Paul, MN, our goal was to provide cash registers to local merchants in the twin cities and surrounding areas. When Metro Cash Register began, the most advanced cash register of the day was made of steel and weighed over 200 pounds. High Tech? Absolutely. The inner workings of these machines are simply amazing. With thousands of gears, levers, shafts and pulls all working together in perfect orchestration, it had to have been developed by teams of mechanical geniuses.
The shift from mechanical to electronic cash registers started slow, but picked up speed quickly. Metro Cash Register embraced the micro-chip industry along with hundreds of other companies from coast to coast. By the early 1980’s, the mechanical cash registers became dinosaurs, left in some stores as a conversation piece. The electronic cash register now owned the marketplace.
By the late 80’s, we saw that the electronic cash register had a new family member on the way. The Point of Sale terminal. Retailers of all types began wanting greater control of their inventory, customer tracking, accounting functions and many features beyond the scope of the simple ECR. In 1984, Metro Cash Register installed its very first Point of Sale computer system.
With 10 years of experience and hundreds of installations, we were perfectly poised to embrace this exciting new technology. We could not have been more wrong. It was, without question, a complete and utter failure. Being an optimist however, I always look for the silver lining. I’ve been looking for 31 years since that experience, and I still haven’t been able to put my finger on that one. The next one was 10 times better than the first and the one after that was twice as good as the second one. Shortly thereafter, we really did get good at it.
ECoincidentally, during these early transition years from the ECR to the POS technology, another very interesting thing happened. Apparently we were not the only cash register company in America experiencing growing pains. Easily a quarter of the companies like ours simply went out of business. There were also an onslaught of “computer companies” getting into the point of sale business. Their average time in business was about 18 months. We persisted, learned, and worked very hard to once again become leaders in our industry. It was in 1989 that we added the name American Point of Sale to the masthead. With the traditional cash register entering it’s golden years and POS technology picking up speed, we wanted our name to reflect the new standard. Not wanting to leave behind our extremely loyal existing customers, we also wanted to hold on to our roots. American Point of Sale and Metro Cash Register simply became American Metro.
Our next milestone occurred in 1990. The Riverfest committee approached us in February. This was a music festival that took place on an island in the Mississippi, right in the heart of St. Paul. They told us they wanted to rent 40 cash registers to handle all of their concession sales. Well, they might as well asked us to raise the Titanic and float it back up the river. The thought of purchasing 40 registers at the same time seemed like the biggest investment imaginable. We were sure this is what JP Morgan felt like when he bought and formed US Steel. We bought the registers, rented them to Riverfest and they worked perfectly. Less than a year later we were contracted to rent 110 registers to the US Open golf championship. Our event rental business was born, burped and off and running.
As both our business and inventory grew, we made another significant change. With the sudden need for a place to store, program and ship all this rental equipment, we decided to move.
We packed up and moved a few blocks down the road into a space with more room than we ever thought we would need. The new building at 1955 University Ave had plenty of office space, warehouse shelving and a prep area. Perhaps the most convenient feature was the loading dock. All these things enabled us to increase our efficiency and continue to offer the best service and prices to our customers.
Over the next 2 decades we took on more and rental events. Lots of PGA golf, music and food festivals, warehouse sales, major sporting events; anywhere a lot of people come together and want to buy food or merchandise, we were called on. Last year alone, we very nearly did 300 events. We added one major customer during an already crazy, busy time and bought 400 more rental units and didn’t think much of it. What a difference a few years makes.