The POS Software Blog

The POS Software Blog

News from Tower Systems about locally made POS software for specialty local retailers.

CategoryToy shop software

An early look at Christmas 2020 in local small business retail in Australia

November 16, 2020
4 Min read
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We are grateful to the many retailers who have shared recent year on year comparative sales data. This has enabled us to a deep dive into shopper traffic, basket depth and product category performance. We have done this to get an early look into what Christmas 2020 in local small business retail might look like.

The headline is that Christmas 2020 looks good in local small business retail.

Local high street retailers are doing considerably better than shopping mall retail. Suburban, regional and rural high street retail businesses, for which we have comprehensive sales data, are doing very well. They are experiencing solid double-digit year-on-year growth. For the dataset of 60+ businesses in our latest analysis, the average year on year revenue growth is 22%.

What is interesting is that the spike in revenue growth is not matched in a spike in shopper traffic. Rather, the revenue spike has come from shoppers buying more in each visit, driving better shopper efficiency. We are seeing average sale value increase by between 10% and 25%.

The dataset includes business across all states and territories except for the Northern Territory. The results are universal. There appears to be no difference between Victoria, which was in lockdown for some of the weeks under analysis and other states that were not in lockdown.

In terms of Christmas specifically, data indicate excellent year on year growth in Christmas card sales. The same is true for Christmas decorations, Christmas-themed home decor and gift wrap. Year on year growth is, again, 20% and more.

Locally made products are doing particularly well. Shoppers continue to engage with supply chain questions. A common question relates to sourcing from China.

Also of note is excellent growth in sales of calendars and diaries. The diaries growth encourages an optimistic outlook on 2021. Smart retailers are pitching it as that and having some fun with putting 2020 in the past.

Back in March, in the early days of Covid in Australia, jigsaws were hot. They sold out fast. Some expected the surge to fade over time. The latest sales data for October and even into the first two weeks of November suggest otherwise. Yes, jigsaw sales remain strong. half of the stores in the latest dataset sell jigsaws and every one of them is reporting year on year growth. The average of that growth is 150%. Key is breadth of range of supply.

In addition to the jigsaw growth, crafts, art, maker kits and similar are all showing strong results.

Comfort gifts are especially strong. Core in this category is plush. Plush is often dismissed as being tired or ho hum. We have seen sales in the plush space up as much as 50% off a strong base. In one local high street retail business in one recent week, for example, they did $1,850.00 in everyday plush, more than double their usual sales. Range, again, is key this this success.

Not reflected in the POS software collected data is anecdotal evidence that people are spending more this Christmas. Many retailers spoke to this. They spoke of shoppers saying they were spending more on loved ones as well as buying gifts for some they would not usually buy for.

There is the wonder as to the role of government stimulus funding on the sales results. While retailers think is is a factor, they do not see it as the key factor. If time does reveal it as a key factor, local small business retailers will respond accordingly. They are an agile bunch.

Considering the sales data and the and the anecdotal comments, Christmas 2020 looks strong. Plenty of retailers are already talking up the first quarter of 2021.

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The top 5 reasons the Tower Systems Toy Shop software is ideal for local Australian toy shops

November 5, 2020
2 Min read
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Here are the top 5 reasons toy shop owners, managers and staff love about our toy shop software.

In developing this list, we thought about it as retailers. We’ve owned and run retail shops in the toy / collectibles / gift niches since the late 1990s. Here they are, 5 reasons people love out toy shop software:

  • Local matters. Local toy shops make a vital contribution to local communities and families nearby. Our software helps you leverage this, to differentiate your business from big competitors.
  • You can bank on loyalty. There is excellent data revealing the lifetime value of a family and those they purchase for. Leveraging this through smart loyalty tools and marketing tuned for toy shops helps you maximise the opportunity.
  • Safe decisions make for a better P&L. While following your gut can see you catch wins, safe decisions, those based on the data, are bankable. From data feeds from suppliers through your POS to accounting software, we help you nurture data for the safe decisions.
  • Not every shopper will walk past your door. A smart and seamless connection between your software and a website can help you sell to people you will never meet. This should be easy, certain and financially rewarding.
  • You are a key asset. You and the people in your business are a differentiator to big business competitors. Too often we see toy retailers not leverage themselves. Our software helps correct this … because you and your knowledge are an asset.

Our Toy Shop Software costs $155.00 for each 30 days. The $155.00 is for access from as many computers as you have in the business. There is no long-term contract. You can cancel at any time. There is no finance application.

We can help you bring across existing data if you switch to our toy shop software. Plenty of MYOB Retail Manager users have found this helpful.

Our toy shop software offers many benefits, including:

  • Save time with electronic invoices from suppliers.
  • Differentiate with you. Share your product use and care information.
  • Easy special customer orders. Smart tracking and customer notification.
  • Make money from pre-orders – Easily pre-sell before release.
  • Community group pricing. Set pricing rules based on customer type.

And … much more than these benefits!

We are grateful to those in toy retail and toy supply who contribute to the evolution of our software for this vital retail channel.

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What if the most important stream of revenue for your business was cut off overnight?

November 4, 2020
3 Min read
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Hundreds of Australian businesses yesterday discovered that China was blocking their exporting of products to that country. According to news reports, Australian wine, copper, barley, coal, sugar, timber and lobster are set to be banned from Friday.

This is dreadful news for the businesses, those who work for them and the communities that rely on them for income and purchases. The ramifications across Australia could be extraordinary.

Hearing the news of the move by China, I wondered – what would happen to your business if a key income stream was cut off overnight?

Would your business survive? Do you have a plan B? Can you move quickly enough to recover? Were you too exposed to and too reliant on the key revenue stream?

These are questions you can discuss with clarity with hindsight. Better still, they are questions you can discuss in advance.

I raise the questions today because considering them before you face the challenges being faced right now by Australian exporters of wine, copper, barley, coal, sugar, timber and lobster gives you the opportunity today to be less reliant on a single revenue stream.

I get that this can read as a ho-hum topic, something not worth worrying about today. However, I bet there are wine makers, sugar farmers and fishermen who several days ago would have thought the topic ho-hum too.

What if the most important revenue stream to your business was cut off overnight, without notice?

Actions I think anyone reading this could consider include:

  1. Assess income to understand the income category streams on which the business most relies and take immediate steps to broaden these.
  2. Assess income sources. In retail especially most income comes from a shop or physical presence. Broaden this, rely on more than the physical presence.
  3. Assess the importance of suppliers by looking at percentage of revenue attached to each and taking steps to broaden these.
  4. Look at your business finances and consider the impact if any supporting finance arrangement was removed overnight.
  5. Workshop with key people as to what it would mean if any supplier was cut off from you or if any product category or brand was overnight stripped from your business. Those participating in this need to challenge each other.

In terms of the situation that has emerged in China this week, we need to look at our reliance on product from China, especially is we rely on people connected with wine, copper, barley, coal, sugar, timber and lobster. For example, if we have customers who work in wine businesses that export to China. How will they feel purchasing product from us that are sourced from China when China has struck so hard at the core of their income source?

What has happened in China is a reason for us to take stock, look more carefully at our businesses, and ensure that we are better structured to trade through unexpected decisions by others.

A personal story: Decades ago, my software company developed software for radiology practices, managing patient accounts and reports on x-rays. I wrote a word processor to make it easier and faster for radiologists to write report. It was a hit, gaining terrific early sales. A year and a half in, an international x-ray film supplier offered radiology practices free software from the US if they contracted to buy their film for 5 years. Our sales stopped overnight. I decided then that my company would never rely on a single customer or a single channel for the majority of business. It’s why we are now in 12 specialty retail channels, why we only sell to sell business retailers and why we will not borrow to fund the business.

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How Tower Systems helps small business retailers sell online with Shopify connected POS software

November 4, 2020
2 Min read
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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.

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VEND POS software search problems speak to a key challenge for cloud POS software

November 3, 2020
3 Min read
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VEND POS software reported customer, product and sales related search problems on their product status page over the last 24 hours, impacting retail businesses using their POS software. The situation is a reminder of a challenge for cloud based POS software. If the platform is down or experiencing an issue, all customers on the cloud based POS software platform experience the issue.

Here is the information from the VEND cloud POS software website about the recent issues:

While our Tower Systems POS Software can be run in the cloud and is used in the cloud by a bunch of our retailer customers, the majority of our small business retailer customers choose the in-house desktop hosted option, running in their business, 100% under their control. This approach contains any problem to their business in most situations.

While, for many, the benefit of centrally managed cloud hosted POS software is appealing, the risk of network wide outage is challenging. The cost of not being able to search customers or inventory or some sales could be detrimental to a business.

VEND reported another problem to its network a month ago, on Facebook:

It is important that small business retailers weigh up the risks to their businesses when considering cloud hosted POS or desktop POS. We serve either. VEND is a cloud based solution and that’s why the outage reported by them is one that it drawing attention today.

We wish the folks at VEND all the best to resolve the issue in a timely and complete manner. No software company wants to see another software company dealing with tech challenges that are impacting customer businesses, especially the businesses that may be vulnerable or businesses just recently coming out of Covid lockdown.

When we read of the VEND cloud POS tech challenges and the outages being experienced today with customer and stock searches and some sales searches, we took this as a reminder to look at our processes, our checks and balances, our platforms and the redundancy we offer our customers. It is a reminder to all of us to ensure that we actively help our customers run stable businesses using our tech with the least possible downtime.

Operating in a purely cloud hosted environment does put a business at risk, it makes them dependent on their provider to have processes and redundancies in place to serve their needs. This is critical in service of stable and interruption free trading.

If a retailer asks our opinion – cloud hosted POS or in-house desktop hosted POS, we share that we have ourselves run shops with our POS 100% in the cloud and we have run shops with our POS software 100% in-store, on the desktop. For a whole bunch of reasons, today we choose in-house. We like the control it provides and that we are not reliant on the internet and the infrastructure of others to keep the POS software accessible to us.

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Tower Systems helps small business retailers with the new normal, the Covid normal

November 1, 2020
2 Min read
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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.

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Our local small business economic stimulus package suggestion for the federal government

October 31, 2020
4 Min read
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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.

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Advice for small business retailers considering a POS software connected website

October 29, 2020
2 Min read
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We have heard from another retailer who has been ripped off by someone for website development. This is happening too often, with small business retailers carrying the cost of the rip off financially and operationally.

In this latest instance, they were promised the world and delivered a mediocre website that is not POS software connected.

Based on years of experience developing POS software connected websites and decades of experience developing POS software, we have advice for small business retailers considering having a website developed for their business and connected to their POS software:

  • Choose a local web developer. Choose a person or business who is local, in the same country (and state even) as you.
  • Be careful. Some businesses may present as local when they are not. Sometimes, an offshore business will use a local agent who comes across as the web developer.
  • Look at recent sites. Ask for a list of websites they have developed in recent months. Look at the sites. Talk to the business owners to determine their happiness.
  • Know what is included. Get a list of exactly what will be delivered with the website and any costs associated with choices you will be asked to make along the way.
  • Be clear about what you want. The site is a key tool for your business. It is essential that you are clear as to your requirements, clear about what you want.
  • Know what you like and don’t like. It can be very helpful if you have a list of websites you like and a list of websites you don’t like.
  • Get it in writing. Ensure that what is agreed is documented, fully documented. Do not sign off to proceed until you have happy with the documentation.
  • Be in control. The website is your shop window. Control your images and text to ensure this window on your business is what you want to see.
  • Pay on completion. While paying a deposit is important and, indeed, fair and essential, holding a portion of payment for completion is important. It keeps the web developer focussed.

Getting the best website for your retail business depends on your level of engagement before starting the project and through. Our encouragement to retailers is that they engage because it is this engagement that will deliver the commercial outcomes you seek.

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Tower Systems releases free Covid contact training tool for small business retailers

October 28, 2020
3 Min read
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We have released to our POS software customers today a free contact tracing initiative through our website that enables our customers to easily collect the details of people entering their business in a format useful to health authorities should that be necessary.

We have done this because state and territory governments have not agreed on a consistent approach and because we think manual record keeping is not ideal in times when health authorities will want a fast response.

Using our approach, we collect and securely store customer details and allow our retailers, and only our retailers, to download these based on selection criteria you enter.

We generate a QR code unique to each business. Customers scan this and are taken to a page we create for each business where they enter their name and mobile number. They can optionally enter their email address. We tag this data with the date and time. That’s it. Their visit is tracked. If asked, retailers can show authorities that they have a process in place for collecting this data. For those without a phone, collect the data manually, on a clip-board.

As we gain use experience with this facility we expect to enhance it further.

We have also shared a template document to use at the front of a store, with the sample QR code replaced with the store’s QR code:

We have developed this free QR code based contract tracing tool to help our small business retailer community to be well equipped for helping health authorities should there be a Covid diagnosis that connects with the retail business in some way.

This is another way we can give something back to the small business retail community, a community that is so important to our business.

We have seen with Covid that the ability to quickly track those who may have had contact with someone who tests positive it critical to the public health response.

This contact tracing initiative from our POS software company could be a useful tool. From the outset, we knew we have to deliver this without cost to small business retailers.

We are grateful to those on our team who have brought this to life and our own retail stores where we tested this to ensure its practical usefulness.

With Covid here for a while longer, having tools like this for rapid response is critical for the economy, critical for our small business retail community.

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Here’s what life in stage 4 Covid lockdown has been like for our small business in Victoria

October 25, 2020
3 Min read
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Our head office is located in Hawthorn, Victoria, in suburban Melbourne, which has been in stage 4 lockdown since early August.

The gap between the end of the first Covid lockdown and the start of the tougher stage 4 was barely a month.

Back in March, when the impact of Covid became known, we made some decisions about the operations of our business that have meant the changes to restrictions have not impacted our business. These were changes any business could make. Indeed, with hindsight, they are changes we could have made years ago.

Even though our business is considered essential given the nature of our work and the customers we serve, we decided, back in March, to move to a remote operation for 85% of our work force of more than 50.

This meant bringing forward transition to our new VoIP phone system, expanding our Zoom capacity, expanding our Microsoft Teams capacity, providing team members with tech at home and putting in place financial compensation for folks working from home.

The tech changes were implemented over 2 days. They have served us well.

With plenty of our workforce usually in retail every day, helping our customers, we had to fundamentally change the way we worked. You cannot do online what you’d usually do in a shop installing software or training people. We adjusted and our customers adjusted.

Today, we’re almost 100% online in what we do and in our service delivery. If, however, a customer wants us in-store and it is essential to their business, we can do this, in stage 4 and outside of stage 4, and we have done it.

From a sales and marketing perspective the changes have been significant. We used to do at least 16 trade shows a year. This year we have done 1 and next year we have none planned. Instead, we have found new and, indeed, more useful ways to connect with prospects.

The result has been an increase in sales. This is good news for us, our team members and our customers. We are sincerely grateful.

Over recent weeks, we have brought several more people into the office as we have some team changes and new colleagues to meet.

While Victoria waits to hear when stage 4 will end, here at Tower Systems we see no major changes to how we operate through the remainder of 2020 and into the early months of 2021.

This new way of operating is offering team members more time with family, lower out of pocket costs and opportunities for healthier lifestyle choices.

We have learnt plenty navigating Covid, benefiting our business and all who work here. This is the good news story we’d like to see media outlets cover – what we have learnt and the benefits leveraged as a result. There are plenty of good news stories like ours.

We get that stage 4 restrictions in Victoria have been challenging. They have also provided opportunities.

We are optimistic about 2021 as we have a terrific base from this year on which to build … and for this we are sincerely grateful.

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Helping to train new retail business owners

October 21, 2020
1 Min read
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We understand the stress of taking over an existing retail business. There is plenty to learn. It usually needs to be learnt quickly. Too often, the folks selling the business move on without providing the level of training that is needed, especially training in POS software.

This is why we have created a special new owners package – for businesses recently sold where our software is running. It offers new owners a new installation trying experience, offering the best outcomes for them to learn the software and review data structures to ensure are they are perusing good business outcomes.

This enhanced new business owner training package is another way we are adding value to small business retailers who use our POS software.

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A marketing tip small business retailers can leverage into additional revenue, easily

October 20, 2020
2 Min read
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Use this unique facility to drive sales in any retail business and nurture optimism in the business and among customers.

It’s a bold claim. A true claim though in that we have the evidence to show that what we talk about here works, and works well, in hundreds of retail businesses.

Loyalty points are dead. Big businesses killed them, made them useless.

While our specialty retail POS software has a loyalty points program you can use, it is our smart discount vouchers that retailers in our community of 3,500+ retail; businesses love. Discount vouchers are part of broader loyalty tools we offer.

Note, we call them discount vouchers – you can call them what you like. The facilities give you leverage that you can employ to encourage shoppers to spend more and shop with you sooner.

Here’s a video from June this year in which we show how vouchers work and provide examples of the value they offer the business for little or no cost.

Here is a video we shot in August this year where we look at discount vouchers in more detail and explore what it looks like inside the business.

We use discount vouchers in retail businesses we operate and have done so since we first released the functionality in February 2013. They work a treat, delivering net beneficial value at no cost to the business.

The fundamental question for any retailer is do you want to grow your business? The answer, of course, is yes. Discount vouchers provide the means through which you can do this. It starts by changing the conversation, by offering something your competitors do not offer and, most likely, cannot offer.

By changing the conversation you drive a different shopper expectation and that helps shoppers see your business through a different light.

People like being rewarded for doing what they would do anyway. Through fine-tuned levers, you are able to nudge their engagement to go beyond what they would do and you can factor the cost of nudging into your pricing.

Across plenty of retail channels, discount vouchers deliver commercial benefits for retail business. Plus, they offer a community group connect that further enhances their value to the business as well as to the local community.

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Tower Systems is encouraging retailers on POS software screen design

October 19, 2020
2 Min read
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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.

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Practical advice for small business retailers in going online with a POS software connected website

October 7, 2020
3 Min read
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We received an online order recently in one of our shops at 1:33pm worth $800.00. It was one of 12 online orders for that business that totalling $1,800 in value.

Each one of these orders was a pre-order – fully paid for up front for stock that is another week away from arriving in-store and two months away from being paid for by us.

The specific products are not relevant as what we share below could apply to plenty of products and product categories. What we have done in this two and a half year old suburban high street business is what anyone could do and what we know some retailer colleagues are doing to win online sales.

  1. Create your online presence as a start-up business. Our recommendation is that you not take your existing shop online under your existing shop’s branding.
  2. Choose a product niche or category that is sought after, that is being searched for. This could be a brand, a licence, an end use or some other segmentation that makes sense to the shopper.
  3. Look for brands and categories people could be loyal to for some time.
  4. Source key suppliers. Preference suppliers who might work with you on geographically exclusive items.
  5. Register a domain and business name that speaks to the shopper for the chosen category.
  6. Develop your approach to packaging and shipping, remembering that this process has to be delivered as a brand extension. Add value here and you will bring them back.
  7. Create a site that serves the shopper.
  8. Include on the website unique knowledge / information that lifts you up as an expert in the product category field.
  9. Include a chat facility on the site, so you can answer questions from people who do not want to email or call with their queries.
  10. Create a separate Facebook page to support the website. Regularly feed contact to that page, content specifically for that page.
  11. Ask your suppliers to link to your website and appreciate them for any promotion they offer on their social media pages.
  12. Search out other social media pages that reach your target shopper and engage with those communities.
  13. Email shoppers, appreciating their business. Find ways to remain connected with them as this connection can help bring them back.

The first step revenue goal with online for any business entering that space has to be 5% (or less) of total revenue. Once there, the next goal is 10%, then 15% and so on. Goals are important.

Treat your online business as a start up. Manage it as such. Embrace mistakes and failures as they are the foundation bricks to success – cliché yes, but true.

  • Do you have to stock in your shop products you sell online? No. We say this as many retailers think the answer is yes. Seriously, think of your online business as a start up – doing this frees you to be more open to what you sell.
  • Can I put my existing shop online though? Of course. It’s 100% up to you.
  • Isn’t shipping hard? Offer what enough people want and shipping can be resolved by building it into the price or you looking at online as cream sales, sales from which you can give up some margin.

Our POS  software company develops websites for small business retailers. While what we have written here does relate to the online success at my high street shop, it is the same advice we provide all retailers who contact Tower Systems querying about website development.

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Website advice for small business retailers

September 29, 2020
4 Min read
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In our work with small business retailers we provide advice on website development, often before the website is created. This advice is based on our own Xperience as well as the experience gained in service of other retailers.

Here is up to date advice for any retailer considering a website for their retail business.

We are not usual POS software company. We are retailers too, with 3 shops. The advice we share here is based on what we have done in one of our small shops, a high street business in Mount Waverley Victoria.

Advice for small business retailer going online.

We received an online order the other day in one of our own retail shops at 1:33pm worth $800.00. It was one of 12 online orders for that business yesterday totalling $1,800 in value.

Each one of these orders that we are receiving right now is a pre-order – fully paid for up front for stock that is another week away from arriving in-store and two months away from being paid for by us. It is the nature of the specific product category that products are released to a calendar schedule.

The specific products are not relevant to what we share here today as what we share below could apply to plenty of products and product categories – in many different retail situations. What we have done in this two and a half year old suburban high street business is what anyone could do and what I know some retailer colleagues are doing to win online sales.

  1. Create your online presence as a start-up business. My recommendation is that you not take your existing shop online under your existing shop’s branding. Big businesses, of course, take their retail brand online as they think shoppers search for them. In fact, shoppers search for product outcomes.
  2. Choose a product niche or category that is sought after, that is being searched for. This could be a brand, a licence, an end use or some other segmentation that makes sense to the shopper.
  3. Look for brands and categories people could be loyal to for some time.
  4. Source key suppliers. Preference suppliers who might work with you on geographically exclusive items.
  5. Register a domain and business name that speaks to the shopper for the chosen category.
  6. Develop your approach to packaging and shipping, remembering that this process has to be delivered as a brand extension. Add value here and you will bring them back.
  7. Create a site that serves the shopper.
  8. Include on the website unique knowledge / information that lifts you up as an expert in the product category field.
  9. Include a chat facility on the site, so you can answer questions from people who do not want to email or call with their queries.
  10. Create a separate Facebook page to support the website. Regularly feed contact to that page, content specifically for that page.
  11. Ask your suppliers to link to your website and appreciate them for any promotion they offer on their social media pages.
  12. Search out other social media pages that reach your target shopper and engage with those communities.
  13. Email shoppers, appreciating their business. Find ways to remain connected with them as this connection can help bring them back.

Our advice for the first step revenue goal with online for any business entering that space has to be 5% (or less) of total revenue. Once there, the next goal is 10%, then 15% and so on. Goals are important. While the ultimate goal will vary by business category, it is vital to have a staring point.

Treat your online business as a start up. Manage it as such. Embrace mistakes and failures as they are the foundation bricks to success – cliché yes, but true.

  • Do you have to stock in your shop products you sell online? No. I say this as many retailers think the answer is yes. Seriously, think of your online business as a start up – doing this frees you to be more open to what you sell.
  • Can I put my existing shop online though? Of course. It’s 100% up to you.
  • Isn’t shipping hard? Offer what enough people want and shipping can be resolved by building it into the price or you looking at online as cream sales, sales from which you can give up some margin.

Our POS  software company develops websites for small business retailers. While what we have shared here does relate to the online success at my high street shop, it is the same advice we provide all retailers who contact Tower Systems querying about website development.

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Staff management tips and advice for local small business retailers

September 28, 2020
3 Min read
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In our work with more than 3,500 small business retailers across a diverse mix of retail channels, we have collected, along the way, a kit of tips and advice for managing staff in retail. We share some of these tips today here as an insight into the help we can provide beyond our POS software, beyond what you may expect from a POS software company too.

We are interested in retail business management, especially small retail business management, as we own and run shops ourselves and have done so since February 1996. We bought our first shop to give us a live test site. It’s grown since then.

Before we get to the tips themselves, we like this selection because it focusses on the management challenge as well as on the financial outcome for the business.

Here are some of the small business retail staff management tips we like:

  1. Set sales goals. In our experience, people perform well when they know the goal. It could be individual goals or a business-wide goal.
  2. Track performance. If not for reward, at least for active management engagement.
  3. Reduce mistakes and theft. Get employee code or number entered for each sale. It works.
  4. Skill your people. Make sure they understand the software and how they can use it to achieve more for the business.
  5. Change the roster. Roster changes can push back against predictability, they can also uncover opportunities.
  6. Set standards. In your POS you can establish standards for data to be followed – product naming conventions, department descriptions and more. The more consistency in your data the more valuable your data.
  7. Stop using the back room. You can’t sell product from the back room. Have staff do all pricing and other usual back room tasks on the shop floor.
  8. Track location performance. Train your staff in the process of tracking the performance of impulse locations. Moving a product could help it find customers. Make sure staff understand what you are looking for.
  9. Share basket insights. Knowing what sells alone and what sells with what can help staff make better decisions as to what is placed where on the shop floor.
  10. Ask them. Yes, ask them what you should / could stock, ask them what think a product is worth. Value their input and they will value more working for the business.
  11. Cut data handling. At every possible point, stop touching data. Having it flow from electronic supplier invoices through the POS to scanned sales through to Xero for accounting can reduce mistakes and possible fraud opportunities.

There are many opportunities for managing staff through and with your POS software. This can improve the business and enhance their experience with your business.

 

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Retail management advice to guide stronger, more valuable, retail businesses

September 26, 2020
3 Min read
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As owners of retail businesses, especially small retail businesses, local retail businesses, know … everyone is an expert, everyone has advice on what to do, what to stock, how to grow the business.

Our retail management advice has been fine-tuned over decades of service of local small business retailers in a range of specialty retail channels. It has come, too, from our own ownership and operating of a range of retail businesses across four different specialty retail channels. We own three online shops and several online businesses today.

The retail management advice we share here is a taste of the support we offer small business retailers beyond the POS software we make, sell and support.

Today, in this post, our focus is on what we consider to be the most important advice for small business retailers. We call it bankable advice, advice you can rely on to add measurable value to your business.

  1. Use your data. Yes, that sounds boring. The thing is, the data curated by your POS software can help you buy better, sell faster, make more from each shopper visit, reduce theft, get more value from employees, make fewer mistakes, cut labour costs … and more. Yes, good data, leveraged consistently, will achieve all this and more.
  2. Connect. At every opportunity, connects your systems and processes from suppliers to your goods inwards to your POS to product returns to your business accounting software. The less you rely on manual processes the better your business decisions and the lower your costs.
  3. Look under the hood. Good POS software gives you eyes in the back of your head, it can show you what you don’t know and may not want to know. Ask what you can find out that may surprise you as it is in these surprises where you may find more value.
  4. Set goals for the business and measure performance. Revenue. Unit sales for key products. Sales by team member. Revenue by supplier. ROI. ROFS. Measure, report, discuss, improve.
  5. Reorder what sells.
  6. Place products next to products they are usually purchased with.
  7. Ensure your staff know how to use the tools you have. Take POS software, too often we see poor use hurting the performance of the business.

Success in small business retail is there for the taking, through management action. Success comes from consistent pursuit of success. Systems helps you consistently pursue success.

Good POS software companies can help you with this, they can help you drive a more successful and valuable retail business. That’s certainly our goal at Tower Systems.

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Small business retail advice: using POS software to encourage shopper efficiency

September 23, 2020
2 Min read
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Shopper efficiency refers to the commercial value a business derives from a shopper, usually from a visit of a shopper, a single visit.

Smart POS software plays a key real in guiding better shopper efficiency. It does this through insights into business performance as tracked and curated through the POS software.

Small business retailers can learn, through smart POS software:

  • What products sell with each other. This is often a dynamic situation and often different to what retailers and those who work in retail assume.
  • What products work better where. This can be insightful as it is usually not where you think.
  • What time of the day products sell. This, too, can be s surprise, especially in online situations where we often see more than half the products selling overnight, when the shop is closed.
  • What occasions products can be purchased for. This data, when it is available, usually surprises as it demonstrates occasion connections that are unexpected.
  • What bundle opportunities can be leveraged to drive shopper engagement with products.
  • How families shop together.
  • What triggers can work best to bring shoppers back sooner.
  • Which are efficient products. This is based on shelf life and therefore sa return on space, inventory investment and more.
  • Which are inefficient products.

Smart POS software is key to harvesting these insights and more for small business retailers, to help them see what they may not have known about their businesses.

Tower Systems develops smart POS software and it backs it with advice, training and support to help retailers make the most of the software, to gain the insights to which we refer here that can show retailers ways they have not expected for their businesses.

We leverage our own retail experience to help;p small business retailers to go beyond the technology and into the realm of business insights so they can find their own business advice, relevant to their businesses, through using the software.

Tower Systems is grateful to serve more than 3,500 small business retailers using its specialty retail POS software in Australia and New Zealand. Through years of service we have built up a deep chest of advice and insights, which we willingly leverage for our POS software user customers.

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Marketing tips for independent toy shop businesses – helping you sell more toys

September 20, 2020
4 Min read
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Today, we share practical no cost and low cost marketing tips designed specifically for independent toy shops – local shops, high street shops, shops that are competing with mass retailers, national retailers and online retailers with big budgets.

We are sharing these tips because we believe in small business, independent business, because we will do everything we can to help local toy shops as they are bread and butter customers for our toy shop software.

When it comes to retail business marketing, we like to keep it simple as we have found simple works best in our own shops. here are our marketing tips for local toy shops:

  1. Run a championship. Choose a simple and fast to play fun game and host a local championship. Like Connect 4 – in a day and a series of heats in-store you could fine a champion and give people a heap of fun.
  2. Run a community noticeboard. A toy shop is a perfect place for a community noticeboard where families can share games and toy ideas with other families and where games clubs can let people know their news. Be an information hub.
  3. Create a community gallery. In a quiet part of the shop, create a gallery where people can share photos of achievements relating to what you sell. Photos could be of a completed jigsaw, a completed craft item, a winner of Monopoly, a completed Lego project and more. The idea is to give people a place to shaw their achievements.
  4. Customer reviews. Include customer reviews of games and toys with products in-store. Personalise and localise your business.
  5. Toy of the week. At the counter, pitch a specific item each week. Make sure the pitch explains why.
  6. Staff picks. Near the front of the store have a shelf or several shelves for displaying staff picks for this week. have a card next to each with an explanation, in their own words.
  7. Leverage collectibles. For those collectible items people will buy regularly over time, offer a reward when they reach a certain number. It can work like a coffee card. It locked them into purchasing from you.
  8. Share your knowledge part 2. People like buying from people who know what they are talking about. You can show off your knowledge through videos, which you have made, on Facebook, videos on your website and in-store.
  9. Share your knowledge part 2. Include product car and use information on receipts. This can be handled easily by your software.
  10. Support community groups. Offer a fundraising deal where group members purchase from you between set dates and they get a discount and the group gets a rebate. Your software can manage this. You help the customer and you help a group they love.
  11. Use loyalty rewards people understand. Any any customer today what 100 loyalty points are worth and they will not have a clear answer in most situations. Ask them how much a $10.00 voucher is worth and they will, for sure, say $10.00. Offer $$ as loyalty rewards and leverage this to get people to spend more than they used to. It’s done easily on your receipts.
  12. Bring them back. Use email marketing tools to thoughtfully invite shoppers back because they bought a particular item or brand or they bought for an annual occasion, like a birthday. Collecting a small amount of data in the sale and having your POS feed data to an email tool can make this email invite easy to achieve.

These are some of the marketing tips we have for local and independent toy shops. We love helping local indie retailers to thrive. We hope these ideas are useful and that they inspire you to create your own.

Small business rocks!

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Rental makes POS software affordable for small business retailers

September 16, 2020
2 Min read
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A year ago, Tower Systems launched a new rental solution for acquiring access to its POS software for small business retailers. What this means is that any business owner wanting to access our POS software can do so through a rental offer.

Making our POS software available to rent for a few dollars a day makes it cash flow effective.

There is no finance agreement to sign. No contract to lock in.

Customers can cancel the rental at any time, meaning their rental obligation is no more than 30 days. This makes the cost of accessing our POS software lower than ever.

By renting POS software, small business retailers are able to put this in place quickly and easily without having to invest significant capital, leaving those funds for products and other more practical investments in their businesses.

Included in the few dollars a day rental price is everything on this list:

  • Access to the POS software itself – on as many computers in the business as you need.
  • Help desk access for assistance with use and more relating to the software. This is human based, working out of Melbourne, with one of our team members also working our of New Zealand. Help desk access is through the phone, email, our website and more.
  • Access to more than 600 articles in our online knowledge base – online and searchable documentation.
  • Unlimited access to personal one on one training.
  • Backup check help – where we check your backup to ensure you are actually backing up properly.
  • Theft check, where we look at your data and apply use principles to look for behaviour that could speak to employee theft.
  • Access to professionally tested electronic stock files from suppliers.
  • Help with access to direct connected EFTPOS, like Tyro.
  • Help with everyday support for e-commerce links from the POS software side.

All of these support and assistance tools are built into the low daily rental cost. Making the cost of the software rental valuable and easy for businesses.

POS software rental makes accessing our software easy. From a technical perspective, ur customers can run the software on their desktop computers or in the cloud – the choice is theirs. We are happy to serve whatever need customers have in that situation.

POS software rental is here for the long term. We think it’s what small business retailers want.

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Half price Toy shop POS software offer for independent toy shops

September 10, 2020
3 Min read
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$77.50 a month: Australian made software for toy shops.

Tower Systems today announces a limited-time half price offer for its Toy Shop POS software.  See this software made for toy shops in a live online demo: sales@towersystems.com.au.

While the half price offer is available until November 30, 2020, half price for those who take up the offer is locked in forever.

  • Monthly rental is usually $155.00. Half price: $77.50.
  • Setup and training is usually $2,750.00. Half price: $1,375.00.

Why now? We know that going into Christmas is not when toy shops want to install new software. We wanted to make it financially enticing. Our shop software offers many benefits, including:

  • Save time with electronic invoices from suppliers.
  • Differentiate with you. Share your product use and care information.
  • Easy special customer orders. Smart track and notify of orders.
  • Community group pricing. Set pricing rules based on customer type.
  • Use tags to get a fresh perspective, side-view, on stock performance.
  • Easy record keeping: serial number tracking of items with serial numbers.
  • Ensure compliance when required with structured age checking.
  • Business differentiating loyalty. Stand out from the crowd. Drive sales.
  • Make money from pre-orders – Easily pre-sell before release.
  • Differentiate with bundles. Make price comparison hard.
  • Track who sold what.
  • Say goodbye to LayBy – with integrated buy now pay later options.
  • Market to customers based on past purchases.
  • Cut accounting and bookkeeping fees with integration to Xero and others.
  • Easily sell online with a direct to Shopify link from your POS software.

This half price offer for $77.50 a month, gives you:

  1. Australian developed and supported toy business POS software.
  2. Unlimited computer licences for your location.
  3. Software updates as we release them.
  4. Shopify / Magento / Woo link. Easily sell online from your POS software.
  5. Xero link. Easing bookkeeping costs and streamlining accounting.
  6. Our OzBiz link. This helps you link to MYOB through OzBiz.
  7. Tyro link – safe, fast and easy EFTPOS link for streamlined sales.
  8. PC Eftpos link. This offers easy EFTPOS processing for the major banks.
  9. Easy buy now pay later options with Zip Pay and Humm.
  10. Support – help desk access.
  11. Training – unlimited one-on-one training over the phone.
  12. User documentation. Access to our searchable knowledge base.

Rent for $77.50 each 30 days, in advance. It can be cancelled at any time.

We have a structured and personalised on-boarding process. The up-front half price on-boarding fee is $1,375.00 (inc. GST). This includes personal, professional training and setup help.

We are grateful to business owners and staff in your channel who guide our software development. Their advice helps us make more useful software.

We have just released R3, new software for toy shops. See it for yourself: sales@towersystems.com.au.

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Fixed price website development for small business retailers

September 8, 2020
3 Min read
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If you are in a retail channel with big competitors, we suggest you think carefully before you take your current products online. Do your research and see if you feel you can compete with this online already, especially the big competitors.

This advice from us is especially relevant if your online plans are about attracting shoppers located outside your current catchment area.

Take the pet space. National pet retailers have a strong presence as do several online-only businesses. They own the value space, where people are buying on price, as well as the service space where people need it now. This is especially true with everyday pet food.

You have to ask yourself what is my point of difference? and can I make enough money off this to justify the website investment?

In terms of pet food and unless you are selling products unique to your business, it would be a tough road to find new shoppers outside your current catchment area. If you think about it, what do they have to go on, especially if you are selling known brands. Service and price are the two key factors. The big players will out spend and out service you.

Look at dog food, there are currently 8,800 searches a day in Australia for this. Once you add in the 65,000 variations to dog food related searches in Australia every day you soon hit almost 700,000 search results. That is the pool in which you would play if you are selling dog food. This is data from a respected data tool we subscribe access to.

Click here to see a summary report we ran recently on dog food. Click here to see a spreadsheet of of the first 30,000 keywords relating to this.

This example is relevant to all of our customers, regardless of whether they sell dog food. Each marketplace faces big business online challenges where keywords have been richly and widely mined.

If you are considering going online and want to reach shoppers beyond your current catchment area, your website will need to pitch in a way that differentiates to others.

So, if you are considering online and want to attract new shoppers, what is unique about your offer and is it financially viable.

We can help. We will research keywords for you, before you set on a path for a new or reinvigorated website. If you would like us to do this, feel free to email me direct (mark@towersystems.com.au) with keywords that you are considering. I will check out traffic volumes for you and email a report with data to help guide your consideration.

If the dog food example does not connect with you, let’s look at toys. In Australia right now, there are 40,500 searches for toys. On top of this, there are 528,000 keyword variables relating to toys with 7 million results. Click here to see a summary report based on current searches in Australia for Toys, which we ran recently.

Our core point here is that planning before you go online is critical to ensuring success once you are online. There are many opportunities online. They are often outside what retailers see as their preferred online solution.

Taking your business online is like creating a start up business. Researching before you begin is critical.

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Buy now pay later helps small business retailers replace LayBy

September 4, 2020
2 Min read
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The Tower Systems POS software is integrated with Humm and ZipPay / ZipMoney and have been since they launched. Both offer small business retailers valuable tools for buy now pay later trading in their specialty retail businesses.

Using Humm or Zip, retailers are able to offer easy over the counter purchase to customers who might otherwise have wanted to use LayBy. This way the customers can take their items immediately and the retailer is paid the next day.

There are rules and processes, which are managed by the POS software.

Tower Systems delivered the first POS software integration for Humm, pioneering years ago a solution that has been beneficial for many small business retailers. This was followed by the ZipPay and ZipMoney integration with the Tower POS software.

Offering buy now pay later is particularly helpful in retail situations where a business is supplying one time only shoppers or infrequent shoppers as it helps the business capture sales that the old LayBy approach may not have served for those businesses.

Integration is easy and payment is seamless. Tower Systems helps retailers connect with bot the respected buy now pay later finance companies, delivering beneficial access and providing front line support to serve these business needs.

While our POS software continues to offer LayBy, it is being used less as businesses seek to use less space for then storage of LayBy goods. Also, consumer legislation covering LayBy can sometimes present more onerous challenges for retailers than nis the case for buy now pay later operations.

The Zip and Humm integrations and just two of plenty of integrations delivered by Tower Systems in this space of helping small business retailers offer broader solutions beyond the core POS software functions. Tower has a long track record of working with other businesses, connecting with them and helping small business retailers to leverage these connections for their own operations.

Tower Systems is a vertical market POS software company serving thousands of independent and small business retailers in Australia and New Zealand with fresh and innovative POS software that is tailored to the unique needs of each retail channel in which it serves.

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