The MaxBox is back and expanding rapidly.
Shortly after announcing the launch of MaxBox Digital Retail Ltd., a rebranding of MaxBox's original home, Felix Corp., the new company is showing signs of life thanks to two deals that will bring a minimum of 2,000 MaxBox kiosks to Ireland and Australia.
MaxBox closed the Ireland deal last week at the ATEi/ICE trade show in London. Ireland-based Cyberhut Ltd., a provider of automated Internet terminals to the retail sector, signed a three-year contract to distribute a minimum of 1,000 MaxBox digital retail kiosks across northern and southern Ireland. MaxBox also plans to announce a similar deal to release another 1,000 kiosks in Australia, said Andy Egan, chairman and chief executive officer of MaxBox Digital Retail, in a phone interview.
These announcements come just a month after Egan's resignation from Felix Corp. over business differences with the company's board chairman. However, Egan said in reality he was pushed out and eventually fired. He attributes his downfall at Felix to the chairman's impatience with the MaxBox's rollout.
"He wanted to do something that was more quickly and the MaxBox has always been something that has come out more slowly," Egan said. "Finally, they weren't supportive anymore, which I thought was ridiculous."
Thanks to mortgaging his home, car and a few other personal items, Egan, the founder of Felix Corp., bought back the trading arm of the company from its administrators on Jan. 11.
"I think I personally have more in the kiosk industry now than anyone else in the world," he said only half-jokingly.
One stumbling block to taking back the MaxBox portion of Felix was that the company's administrators had already begun to yank the already deployed MaxBox kiosks. However, Egan said some of the location's owners refused to give up their machines. As for the ones that did get removed, the company is working to get those back in place.
MaxBox has also renewed talks with KIOSK Information Systems to install MaxBox software to new and existing kiosks in the United States.
Egan said his goal in obtaining the MaxBox property again was to finish what he started. Though he said the rollout will probably continue at a slow pace for now, he expects that once a big name retailer comes on board, the number of kiosks in deployment will increase rapidly.
"I think it will still come slow for us," he said. "But I think 2008 is the year we will get some traction."
