January will not be normal for local Aussie retailers.

January has traditionally played out in different ways for small business retailers in different parts of Australia.

In some parts of the country, retail is usually so slow that many shops close for several weeks. In other parts of the country, towns swell with tourists and trading hours are extended.

What has been consistent about January for small business retail in Australia is that it has been prdictable.

I don’t think January 2021 will play out in a predictable way.

People are not travelling overseas. But, they are motivated to travel, to shake off 2020 and to start 2021 with new memories, from more local travel.

With plenty of annual leave not taken in 2020, I suspect more will start 2021 taking leave.

Businesses will start 2021 earlier than usual, working on new approaches to business, including on-going working from home for some, which will open opportunities locally.

Places that have not seen many tourists over the years are likely to see some. Tourist destinations will fill early, encouraging people to look elsewhere.

In short, the usual January slowdown we have been used to in small business retail in most parts of Australia is less likely in 2021, in my view.

Locals staying local will be looking to embrace optimism about 2021. Local retailers can lean into this, nurture optimism and offer opportunities for engagement with the local community. In our shops we can make January fun and feed into the desire for a good start to the year.

Be ready. Make sure the shop is fresh, that you have new product and that ou provide an entertaining retail experience. Think about your hours. Find ways to leverage the changed situation.

I mention this today so you can plan. January will be different. How it plays for you depends on you.

The POS software from Tower Systems offers serial number tracking of products sold. This is a powerful point of difference for the POS software as serial number tracking is not common in software.

Using the Tower Systems POS software, retailers can record the serial numbers of all items arriving in-store that have unique serial numbers. These can be tracked at the point of sale. They can also be tracked for warranty, servicing, valuation and insurance purposes. Stores can also record serial numbers only when they sell – when they record, at arrival or sale, is up to them.

The serial number tracking facilities in the POS software become valuable in almost any retail situation in which they are used.

Thera are some retail sectors where suppliers require the tracking of product serial numbers at the point of sale. There are some regulatory situations where tracking serial numbers is key. Doing this through the POS software brings certainty and consistency to retail businesses.

Tower Systems is proud to offer serial number tracking in its POS software. We are grateful to the many suppliers and retailers who have guided us on this over the years, keeping us on top of the needs of all stakeholders in this serial number tracking space.

Serial number tracking in our POS software has been available for many years. Sure, it has been enhanced over time as needs have evolved, but we first started offering it in software we sold close to 20 years ago. Of course, the software we sell today is completely different, made for today, for today’s needs.

Using the serial number tracking tools in our POS software, retailers can also maintain good records that are useful for themselves in their own management of their businesses.

From the moment stock arrives in the business we manage serial numbers, recording each serial number. alternatively, you can enter the serial number of the item when it is sold – the retail business decides on the appropriate time for them to manage the recording of a serial number. This is a local management decision they can make.

Tower Systems is grateful to serve more than 3,500 small business retailers across several niche retail channels – with specialty POS software offering facilities like serial number tracking covered here.

We reckon the receipt produced by our POS software is the best receipt you will find for small business retail. Are we biased? For sure. This is our creation, our baby.

The receipt produced by our POS software is  detailed, flexible, easily changed, encouraging, educational, factual, promotional, product supporting and loyalty engaging.

This is a receipt designed to help small business welcome shoppers back sooner.

So much of what is on the receipt is under the control of retailers. So much can be changed, easily.

Product use can care instructions can be included.

A loyalty encourager can also be included, the details of which are 100% under the control of the retailer and can be dynamically determined based on what has been purchased, when and by whom.

This is a smart receipt, a powerful receipt, a receipt designed to help small business retailers to grow their businesses.

This is a receipt for 2020 and beyond in so many ways, beyond what you can see.

There is much more to this receipt than you can see in this image, too. Our POS software offers plenty of tricks and opportunities beyond what is in this blog post.

Here at Tower Systems we are grateful for the encouragement and guidance from our retailer community to evolve the receipt beyond the traditional into something that is of genuine value in many different retail settings.

Retailers using our POS software have teremndous control over receipts, when they print, the detail included and so much more.  Our customers really are in control of the receipts their software prints.

The receipts our POS software produces can go beyond paper, too. There are electronic versions customers can leverage, but more on that another time. Suffice to say, we are innovators of all sorts of receipts, in many formats.

In addition to meeting statutory requirements, the receipts produced by the POS software from Tower Systems are a valuable and appreciated piece of marketing power in a retail business, showing off key differentiators in the business that themselves held;p to drive repeat business. We love that we have been able to do this.

Tower Systems serves more than 3,750 small business retailers across a range of retail channels. Our 40 years in the POS software development and support business have seen us move through generational changes and the old retail receipt is one example of this.

Black Friday is this Friday, November 27. We’ve been helping retailers to maximise the opportunity in-store and online.

(play with sound on).

More small business and local retailers are selling online with beautiful websites created by the web development team at Tower Systems, working in close consultation with the POS software development team at the company.

In 2021, having a website, a beautiful website, for online sales is like having a fax machine or a photocopier was all those years ago in retail.

Through a consultative process, the web specialists at Tower help small business retailers using its POS software to discover how they can genuinely differentiate online to attract new shoppers, especially shoppers who are not local, shoppers who may otherwise not know the business exists.

By researching current search engine data as to what people are searching for, Tower Systems has been able to help small business retailers pivot online while using the existing business for labour and other overheads.

While the temptation is for represent to represent their existing physical retail business online, the most success is had by retailers who treat their website as a start-up, a new business. This is where the comprehensive keyword research by Tower can help unlock commercially valuable opportunities.

One small business retailer in Numurkah Victoria created a beautiful baby website, helping that business to expand their baby gifts and products offering and through this to find many shoppers interstate, adding genuine bottom line value. Today, the website for that retail business is one of the best you will see in that category.

All website development is done in Australia by the Tower Systems web team. They have delivered many websites for retailers. They have also delivered five websites through which members of a group sell collectively, to reach an even bigger audience.

While Tower Systems partners with the Shopify, Magento and WooCommerce e-commerce platforms, it is the Shopify platform that is most widely used for small business retailers.

The Tower web experts can offer guidance on shipping, methods of payment, marketing, pricing, product category structure, photos and more. They guide retailers from beginning to going live.

By connecting their website seamlessly to the Tower POS software, small business retailers are able to manage inventory and data efficiently and accurately.

We are grateful for all the retailers engaging with our web strategy and for their pursuit of sales growth through a diverse mix of retail opportunities.

The Sunday Age today has a story from Dominic Powell and Simon Johanson about retail and the new normal. It speaks about how retail has changed through Covid and that many changes will stick:

From smaller shops to major chains such as JB Hi-Fi and Coles, the exodus from Australia’s inner cities is just one of the many effects of the coronavirus pandemic shopkeepers fear could persist well beyond the six to 12 months until the world has its vaccine.

As the article notes, there is no doubt that the surge in online will continue.:

Broader changes, like the rapid acceleration of online shopping, will be widespread and unstoppable. Retailers are already re-assessing their moribund bricks-and-mortar stores and spending millions on online platforms. “Omnichannel” (along with “resilience”) has been the jargon du jour for merchants through the recent corporate reporting season.

There is also no doubt, in our view, that the migration away from malls to the high street and regional, will continue, too.

We think that retail has fundamentally changes. Indeed, we saw this months ago ourselves in sales on our POS software. That surge, especially in niche retail channels and outside of shopping malls was an insight, which was inspiring to us and encouraging, too.

People working from home will want to stay working from home. So many benefit from this, they like it, the flexibility it offers. Businesses, too, like this as it plays well as to operating costs as in other ways in which the business operates.

We are an Aussie POS software co serving specialty retailers with locally made and supported POS software and beautiful connected Shopify websites.

We are grateful to be playing a role in helping small business retailers configure their businesses to adjust to serving these and related changes ion the high street and in regional and rural Australia.

The new normal is a more diverse, a more spread out, country. This is great news for our small business retail community.

We offer a fresh approach to POS software and selling online.

We’re not your usual POS software company. As retailers ourselves – 3 gift / pop culture shops and 6 online businesses – we know how we like to be sold to. we have our approach with our POS software.

Back in March we pitched a package of stimulus ideas to federal politicians and here with little interest. Today, we pitch a modified version, reflecting feedback from small business retailers in our POS software community of 3,500 businesses.

These are ideas from people living it, not economists. They are immediately and locally beneficial successions designed to serve local communities and retailers in those communities.

Covid stimulus package for local small business retailers and the communities in which they serve.

Small business retailers are nimble and able to lift local economies faster than big businesses and certainly better than online businesses.

Here are six tips for politicians on steps they can take, decisions they can make to help lift retail, especially small business retail, as well as those local businesses with which small business retailers can quickly connect.

1. Local shops refresh grant. Give every local retail business a grant of at least $25,000 with the stipulation that it is spent locally (at least within the state or territory) on capital works for the shop, to improve the shop. It could be for painting, carpentry, electrical, new aircon, new carpeting, staff training or similar. Proof of local spending in the form of an invoice from a local tradesperson or small business company with and ABN and more than a year of trading as recognised by the ATO – to avoid fraud. The management of this should be online with quick approval and payment. Note: the $25,000 is suggested to provide sufficient local economic stimulus.
2. Local visual merchandising support. Keeping in-store displays can be a challenge for small business retailers. Fund a network of merchandisers to make a 2 hour call weekly on qualified independent small retail businesses, sub $1M retail product turnover (i.e. not including agency), ABN registered, trading for six months or more. With each visit to be about visual refresh of the shop. Cap the campaign at six months and then assess the economic value. Only local merchandisers to be used – i.e. not an overseas agency who hires local contractors.
3. Local artists grants. Offer cash grants to fund buskers for local high streets, to make shopping locally more entertaining. Make the application easy. Focus on local artists entertaining in their local community. This serves the dual purpose of injecting cash locally as well as fostering the local arts. The application process should be online, approval fast and payment immediate.
4. Direct all politician electorate spending to be with local small businesses. For printing, subscriptions, gifts, parties, cards, everything for a year purchased through a politician’s electorate to be through a a business in their electorate. Have the results assessed independently. Ensure that spending is fair, too, to benefit a variety of local businesses, and not dolled out as political favours. Shop local, shop small.
5. Run a national shop small shop local ad campaign. Make it educational, smart, encouraging … guiding Aussies on the value to them from shopping local, shopping small. Help to understand the true value of shopping local, shopping small compared to the alternatives. The ad campaign should run regionally across multiple media platforms, giving preference to locally owned platforms with a track record for not managing their business to minimise tax. Yes, Amex does this. We need a campaign that is not credit card supported.
6. Establish local currency systems. These work overseas on regional towns where local currency has more value than the national currency. It supports shopping local through a smart value structure. the government role could be on the tech back end to manage the currency – taking away capital cost from local councils. To find out more ab9out this, read up on the Bristol Pound.

This list could be much longer. It is offered here as a start, to get people thinking of practical ways to support shopping small, shopping local.

Corona is challenging the economy. While we am not economists, we suspect that giving money to people likely to spend it quickly and spend it locally would be good for the economy and at a pace that is helpful to overall economic performance.

This is all about boosting local.

Using our POS software, small business retailers in Australia and New Zealand have plenty of control over the design of their main POS screen. Changing this is easy. No coding is required. Our customers are proving to be creative in tailoring the screen to their unique business needs.

To celebrate some awesome POS software screen designs, over a week ago we announced a POS software screen design competition for our customers. We are giving away 6 bottles of wonderful champagne.

Our goal was to encourage folks in our retail business community to inspire each other, to show what is possible and to share how they have improved their businesses by embracing design change opportunities in our POS software.

Today is the day of judging. We are excited to have had so many retailers engage with this. The entries are terrific. Our customers are innovative, creative. They have shown a real love for our POS software.

Here is what we announced in our regular customer service email a week back:

Win a bottle of champagne.

Hey, Retailer 3 users, share your POS screen design to get in the running to win one of 6 bottles of Heidsieck And Co Monopole Gold Top 2010 champagne. We will choose 6 well-designed R3 POS screens as winners, each receiving a bottle – sent to you, free.

To enter, post a photo of your POS screen on our private customer Facebook page. Or, email support@towersystems.com.au with the subject – POS Screen competition. We will post it to the private Facebook page for you. Now, if you want to play with your design, this video may help: https://vimeo.com/387825075

We will keep this competition open for a week, until 9am Monday October 19, 2020. We will choose 6 POS screen designs as the winners and send a bottle of this champagne as a price.

Why are we running this competition? Because we are seeing some awesome POS software screen designs, designs that we think could inspire others to create better POS software screens. You have excellent flexibility in the software. We hope seeing the designs inspires you.

Here is what you could win: Heidsieck And Co Monopole Gold Top 2010. Heidsieck and Co Monopole are one of the oldest Champagne houses in the Champagne region. Gold Top 2010 is balanced and pleasing with hints of roasted and dry fruits, hazelnut, reminiscent of honey with a gingerbread dominance. This is a nice drop.