Pan-Oston Chief Financial Officer Steve Guess (left) and Marketing Coordinator Elizabeth Newbould stand in the company’s new warehouse and distribution center amid dozens of store checkout fixtures the company sells to customers such as Walmart and Target.

Steve Guess, chief financial officer at Bowling Green’s Pan-Oston, shows off a new product called a tunnel scan device at the company’s headquarters on Louisville Road. A conveyor belt is partially covered by a tunnel that looks a bit like a miniature MRI machine.

“Products go through the scanner and can be recognized by the barcode or by visual recognition,” he explained. “Anything retailers can do to get people in and out quicker is a good thing. And this also saves labor.”

Welcome to the new world of retailing, which may be changing beyond recognition thanks to the explosion in online shopping and the trend toward more self-checkout lanes.

Such trends could be bad news for a company like Pan-Oston, a store-fixture manufacturer that has been making checkout lanes for more than 50 years and recently celebrated topping the 1 million mark in customer orders.

But a quick look around Pan-Oston’s headquarters and its new warehouse and distribution center in the Kentucky Transpark gives a different impression. As Guess and Pan-Oston Marketing and E-commerce Coordinator Elizabeth Newbould are quick to point out, Pan-Oston is evolving.

“We’re not limited to store fixtures,” said Newbould. “We have to do more in order to stay viable.”

It’s no coincidence the sale that put the company over the seven-figure mark in orders was a self-checkout kiosk sold to Texas-based grocery chain H.E. Butt. Those types of new-age devices are becoming the new staple for Pan-Oston.

“We’re trying to give the customer what they want,” said Guess. “Walmart has a deal where you can buy something online and then go to customer service, where they have pickup lockers. We’re making the pickup lockers.”

And that’s not all. Pan-Oston, a Houchens Industries subsidiary, is making such products as checkout lanes that can be converted from manned to self-service.

The strategy of embracing the changing face of retail seems to be working. Pan-Oston recently purchased a 60,000-square-foot speculative building in the Transpark, turning it into a warehouse and distribution center that was needed to keep pace with the company’s growth.

Touring that building, Guess points out the 10 stations in the warehouse used for what’s called embedded hardware solutions.

“We have the technical expertise to implement our self-scan software or use a customer’s product,” he said. “We can hook up all the electronics to the lane we build. We integrate all electronics and make sure it’s working before we deliver it to the customer.”

The success of such strategies is measurable. Pan-Oston’s sales grew by 35 percent last year after increasing by 10 percent the previous year and stretching the 305,000-square-foot headquarters building beyond capacity.

“We ran out of space,” said Guess. “The warehouse was strictly for expansion, and now it’s 60 percent full.”

A tour of the new building affirms that, as blue Walmart fixtures are stacked nearly as high as the 38-foot ceiling. Forklifts move those fixtures onto loading areas, preparing to load trucks.

“It used to take us two hours to load a truck at our headquarters,” said Guess. “This warehouse has made us much more efficient. We’re down to about 30 minutes.”

Another change at the company’s headquarters building is in the workers putting the products together. Among the early adopters of the Bowling Green Area Chamber of Commerce Workplace Literacy Program designed to bring more of Bowling Green’s international community into the workforce, Pan-Oston has some 40 employees from the city’s growing Burmese community among its total workforce of 185.

Those refugees from war-torn Myanmar have become assets to the business, according to Guess.

“We work with the International Center and with some local churches to tap into the international market,” he said. “It’s working out great. They’re dependable and hardworking.

“They came to America to survive. Now they’re working at Pan-Oston and getting English lessons (through the chamber program),” said Guess. “The courage they have in moving to a new land is unbelievable.”

Those and the other Pan-Oston employees are part of one of the largest employee-owned companies in the country. Houchens, with some 18,000 employees and more than $3 billion in annual sales, ranks behind only Florida-based Publix Supermarkets and Missouri-based Penmac on a list of largest employee-owned companies.

“I love being part of Houchens,” said Guess. “Every employee is an owner. All the things we do to improve profitability, we get all that back. It’s the best retirement plan ever.”

Trying to continue the company’s growth, Guess said Pan-Oston is branching out into consumer products. One of the first ventures was a line of gun safes designed to fit under a bed. That evolved into a “metropolitan safe” used to store jewelry and other valuables.

Guess expects Pan-Oston to take advantage of its metalworking and painting capabilities to produce more such products.

“We’re going to do everything we can to grow this business,” he said. “It adds shareholder value for our employees.”