Skurla's in 2024
The year is 2024 and we're ushering in the new year with a whole lot of new. We've got a new logo, a new website, and a new staff member! We've got big plans for this year, so let's get into it.
In modernizing our business, we decided to move forward with refreshing our brand a little. Skurla’s is admittedly an uncommon name but one we are proud to have and we are still Skurla’s through and through. But the name itself and the old logo, which outside of a small blue star, didn’t really “shine”. We wanted something memorable that folks could identify easily when looked at. We also wanted it to embrace some Alaskan themes. So we present you with our new logo:
On first glance, you might think, hey - that’s looks like the California flag! It definitely has some elements of it, with the bear and the star. But our old logo had the star in as well, we just added a bear. Why? We constantly use the analogy that Alaskans are a lot like bears, we’re really active in the summer and then in the winter we hibernate and go to Hawaii! I mean, bears do that right?
All similarities and jokes aside, our bear is a friendly one, with a smile on his face, looking towards the North Star and the future. Both their blue color and North Star have roots in the Alaskan flag and beyond. The Big Dipper on the Alaska state flag is part of Ursa Major, which means greater bear. Said Benny Benson who designed the state flag in 1927, “The blue field is for the Alaska sky and the forget-me-not, an Alaskan flower. The North Star is for the future state of Alaska, the most northerly in the Union. The dipper is for the Great Bear—symbolizing strenth [sic].“ So in a way, our logo has a strong connection to Alaskan themes. Plus, we hope to give our bear a name and even have some cute, fuzzy teddy bears made to give out to customers.
With our new website, we are striving to have a less is more approach to our brand and what we do. In the past, we fully embraced the opposite and published a repository of information. What we’ve learned is that technology outpaces our ability to update and correct everything we do and write about. We are uniquely focused on our customers more than having an expansive website. Also, we know that most of our newer customers prefer talking directly to us, watching videos, or getting information that’s unique to them. So if you’ve read this far, you’re a superfan and we love you! But most of our customers are so busy that it’s hard for them to find time to engage with us. So, we’re making it more streamlined to help.
Speaking of streamlining, we discontinued our NCR Counterpoint line at the beginning of the year. It’s been a legacy product for several years now and we had only a few customers left still using it. We’re focusing our support and sales efforts on our Skurla’s Grocery POS powered by Auto-Star POS, which is a robust but easy to use software made for grocery and retail. We’ve been working with them for a few years now and they are easily the best software vendor we’ve ever worked with! For our restaurant operations, we have two POS software packages and are looking to bring on a third. It sounds a bit strange but the restaurant and bar industry is an extremely diverse vertical with many different needs. On first glance, you might think that one size fits all but we’ve found out that’s just not the case. We anticipate bringing on another software in Q2 of this year.
I mentioned a new staff member and we found a great fit with Galena Egorova, a recent graduate of UAA (University of Alaska Anchorage) with a BS degree in Computer Science. She’s originally from Yakutsk, Sakha Republic in Russia (located in the Siberian region) and is very used to the cold! She’s a fan of video games, proud parent of a rabbit, loves pizza, and technology. We hired her in October and she’s been getting to know all our customers. We expect great things from her and she wants to give a shout out to her mother, “Hi Mama!” and quickly said, “Add Papa too or else he’ll be jelly!”
Later in the year we plan on moving our internal software platform to a more modern solution that integrates with the majority of our other softwares. That’s a mouthful! It really means we’ll be able to better serve our customers and do it quicker. It’s a big investment in time and resources and it’ll be 100% worth it.
We’re looking forward to a great year!
How can we better serve you?
https://twitter.com/Skurlas
https://www.facebook.com/SkurlasPOS/
https://www.instagram.com/skurlaspos/
Skurla’s support: support@skurlas.com
Skurla’s sales: sales@skurlas.com
Phone: 907-243-2683
https://www.facebook.com/SkurlasPOS/
https://www.instagram.com/skurlaspos/
Skurla’s support: support@skurlas.com
Skurla’s sales: sales@skurlas.com
Phone: 907-243-2683
www.skurlas.com /