Connected product development
- Device + cloud architecture
- Sourcing & supplier networks
- Certification
- Manufacturing handoff
- Mesh networking
I build the tech that lives behind the counter.
David Salisbury — 25 years in retail and hospitality technology. Point of sale, payments, loyalty, connected hardware, and wallet. I help teams design products that survive a real store on a real Saturday morning, and I now do the same for AI features that have to earn their keep.
A digital slingshot for independent retail. OmniQpon turns a barcode scan into a wallet coupon, a retail-media moment, and a measurable brand event — without touching the POS.
The idea is borrowed from payments. EFTPOS put money on a universal rail so any terminal could take a card without the merchant touching the payment rails. ECTPOS does the same for coupon transactions: any point of service, no integration, deployed in minutes.
omniqpon.com →Over 25 years in global marketing and product development, almost all of it in retail technology.
I started on the Asia-Pacific side of the business, building Star Micronics' Australian operation, then moved into global product development and ran an internal SaaS startup — Star Cloud Services — to 25,000 merchants in 20+ countries. Fivestars, and then SumUp after the acquisition, put me on the merchant side of the counter: loyalty, payments, kiosk, and enterprise POS rollouts.
These days I write the prototype as well as the spec. AI-assisted development means a product idea can be a running app in an afternoon — which changes what “early” means, and changes who needs to be in the room.
RIOT is how I do that work now — independently, with a small number of teams at a time, close enough to the product to be useful.
Developing solutions that combine payments, loyalty, and POS integration with an IoT focus is, without doubt, the most fulfilling place to be — a culmination of a lifetime spent building and delivering retail technology. — David Salisbury
“As a cashier, I shouldn’t have to ask for a phone number. The loyalty ID should arrive with the tap.”
“As a shopper, I want the receipt on my phone without handing over my email or downloading an app.”
“As an independent retailer, I want a brand-funded offer to redeem at my counter without touching my POS.”
“As a multi-unit operator, I want orders from the kiosk, the counter and third-party delivery to land on the same kitchen screen.”
“As a merchant, I don’t want a second tablet on my counter just to run a loyalty programme.”
“As a small merchant, I want to accept a card on the phone that is already in my pocket.”
“As a franchise operator, I want tonight’s numbers in my own analytics stack, not a spreadsheet at the end of the month.”
“As a convenience store, I want to scan a barcode and have the item priced without typing in four thousand SKUs.”
“As a founder, I want to see the thing actually working before I commit a sprint to it.”
“As an engineering lead, I want the integration spec to arrive as a Postman collection I can run, not a Word document I have to interpret.”
“As an ISV, I need the printer to behave identically on Android, iOS and Windows, in twenty countries.”
“As a retailer, I want the device on my counter to do something my competitor’s box cannot.”
A long engagement, a short one, or a single call to work out whether the thing is worth doing at all. Any of those is fine.