The POS Software Blog
News from Tower Systems about locally made POS software for specialty local retailers.
For many years, this has been the day to look forward to. We share gifts and have some fun, and we get to steal gifts, and have some more fun.
We are grateful to be able to have this tradition again this year, celebrating face to face, and enjoying the community that is the Christmas season for us here at Tower Systems.
In a retail shop using our POS software last week we saw first-hand how the unique loyalty tools in our small business POS software helped a customer spend close to $300.00 when they originally visited the shop to purchase a $25.00 item.
The customer was grateful to have found items that were on their shopping list but that they had not considered purchasing from this shop. This bus where the smart loyalty tools kick in, they get the shopper considering beyond the one destination transaction. They give the shopper a reason to look up and look around.
Check out this video in which we discuss our loyalty tools and how retailers and shoppers interact with them.
Shopper loyalty is something to nurture, with care, as it sits at the core of local small business retailer success.
Discount vouchers genuinely differentiate your business.
Male shoppers are more likely to spend the voucher immediately and many customers use the voucher to purchase items more expensive than the items in the initial purchase made. Customers see the voucher as cash, often commenting that they like the direct approach better than a points-based system. They like the transparency and simplicity.
In our own retail experience, which sees us competing against major retailers in a Westfield shopping centre, several shoppers have stated they prefer Discount Vouchers over the rewards programs of our competitors.
We are confident that Tower Systems’ Discount Voucher facilities can help you:
Buy X Get Y Free
The “buy x, get y” pitch is a common offer in retail businesses, especially those that sell everyday items such as pet food, magazines, garden mulch and other consumable items.
In the Tower Systems software loyalty facilities you have access to a powerful and configurable BUY X GET Y facility. You can use this to track shopper engagement and ensure proper rewarding of the free product at the right time. This is an excellent tool for driving shopper loyalty without the usual manual overhead of clipping cards or managing other processes. You can also report on the reward at the right time back to the supplier to ensure you are compensated for giving away the free product. Indeed, you have various detailed reporting options.
The BUY X GET Y facility has been developed with retailers in several channels as well as with suppliers to those retailers to ensure it meets the requirements of both business participants.
The total loyalty package in the Tower Systems software is comprehensive, flexible and tuned to offer retailers choice through which they can serve their own situation with confidence and success.
Antique shops have some unique needs, often complex needs. It is rare there is perfect fit software for every situation.
Here at Tower Systems we have evolved a version of our Antique business software to serve antique dealers and retailers, to serve as many of their needs as we can in software priced at $185.00 a month.
We made a video recently in which we look and discuss some of the facilities in our Antique business software. We’d be grateful to provide a more comprehensive look at the software, a personal demonstration guided by what it is that you are looking for to serve your business.
Antique businesses are unique and special businesses. Here are some of the ways our POS software for antique dealers helps leverage that uniqueness:
Our Australian made and supported antique shop software does much more than this. Be sure to see it for yourself, live and obligation free, to see if it could serve you and your business.
While our Antique business software will not serve every need, a personal demonstration is the best way to see if it serves your needs. We’d love to arrange this demonstration for you: 1300 662 957 or sales@towersystems.com.au.
For many years, Tower Systems has published marketing tips for local small business retailers leading up to Christmas. The goal has been to present ideas early in the season to encourage local retailers to engage beyond the traditional.
Here is an edited version of Christmas marketing ideas pitched to local small business retailers this year:
The key to a more successful Christmas is to be different to what people expect from your business.
Tower Systems is grateful for the opportunity to provide POS software for firearms dealers as well as fishing and outdoors businesses. We are equally grateful to create POS software integrated Shopify websites for these businesses, to help them sell in-store as well as online.
One recent Shopify website we created is for H. Rehfisch & Co – a fishing, firearms and outdoors shop in Ballarat, Victoria.
On the website we created for them you can see products managed by our POS from product details to images. Our web team worked with them to bring this online sales opportunity to life, which is complex because of rules from Shopify and payment gateways for businesses authorised to sell firearms.
Our process was to take it step by step, to meet the regulatory requirements, so that this loved local fishing, outdoors and firearms business could reach more customers through their online presence.
We are truly grateful for the opportunity to help them with this, to help the Rehfisch business in Ballarat to reach more customers in more locations than they could reach from their physical store alone. Theirs is a business with a history:
H Rehfisch was established in 1860 serving the Ballarat and surrounding areas as a Leather Merchant. Our trade began to transition from leather goods and hides to firearms and fishing in the early 1900’s. The last five years has seen H Rehfisch & Co farewell the little shop that housed their trading for over 100 years to embrace a purpose built building. Ron Rehfisch handed the reigns over to his son, Guy Rehfisch, in 2006 who is now 5th generation owner.
Tower Systems is honoured to serve this family business, to help them find more shoppers and to transact efficiently and accurately.
Using our software, local small business retailers can:
Helping local small business retailers like H. Rehfisch & Co is our mission. We are grateful to be of service.
For years we have been sharing stories on social media for our own shops. We started this to reflect on the diversity of shopper situations we engage with. The stories provided context for shopping by customers. Here is an example relating the greeting card purchases. It received over 200 lives in less than 24 hours:
Storytime. The twenty-something guy had been standing looking at cards for ten minutes. He seemed lost. “Hey, mate, you need a hand?” I said, without wanting to intrude. “Yeah”, he said with a sadness uncommon for a young guy looking for a card. “What are you looking for?”, I was careful in my approach. “My best mate’s dad died suddenly”, he paused. “He’s angry and wrecked” he paused again. “I, I want to tell him I’m here for him. I figured a card could be good,” he looked back at the range. “But, they’re too flowery.” He was right, the sympathy cards he was looking at were too flowery. After a while, we found a blank card with a dog on it, because his mate likes dogs. We worked out some words that got across what he wanted to say without being flowery.
Some days in retail we get to help in ways that will stay with us for years.
And then there is this one:
Storytime. Joe is 89 years old. He lives in a nursing home. When he moved there, he was limited as to what he could bring. The old shoebox with the collection of cards he’d received was the first thing he chose.In that box are cards from his time as a local community Aussie rules coach. Parents and players had written cards over the years and Joe had kept them. “Each card is a memory”, he says with a smile, looking through his collection.The oldest card Joe has is from 40 years ago from a player grateful for Joe’s help. Here it is so many years on, making Joe’s day.
Greeting cards hold the most wonderful memories.
Storytime. Ethan’s school assignment asked that he write about his earliest memory. “That’s easy,” he said, “it was the first letter I ever got. It was a birthday card from grandma. I was 4 and she posted me a birthday card with a tiger on it and it came in the mail. That’s the first memory I have. I still have card, and the envelope. Mum got them framed for me.”
The card created in Ethan an interest in mail and letters more specifically. Now, 6 years on, every couple of weeks Ethan will write to a relative in the hope of receiving a response in the mail. And it all started with that birthday card, which remains his first memory.
Cards give us memories and stories long after they are received.
Storytime. “Sorry, it’s just a card, no money for a gift this year.” That’s how Chris signed off the card to Jules, her friend of more than 20 years, since they were in high school together. Swapping birthday gifts with a card and a note were a tradition. Since they lived on opposite sides of the country, they’d usually include a note with the card and gift each year.
Jules wrote back: “your card and note mean the world to me, every year. While I may have, possibly but please don’t judge me, re-gifted the odd gift from you, I have kept every card, every single card from you. I have 23. They the story of us. They are a perfect gift. Thank you.”
The card we send today can provide heart-warming memories for many years to come.
Social media provides us an opportunity to share the narrative of our businesses. Local small business retailers are well placed to have wonderful stories they can share.
Our small business retail advice today is to take a break from shop here or shop local or look at this product and share something of yourself, share stories that speak to those who have shopped with you and yourselves.
Oh, and to answer an expected question for comment about using text and not images? Most social media posts use images. Going with text content could be more easily noticed. Certainly that is my experience in using posts like this over recent weeks.
At Tower Systems, we are asked from time to time for help by a retailer doing it tough. Too often, the request comes when it is too late. In this article, we outline steps any retailer can contemplate from them moment they realise their retail business is in trouble, from the first thought that closing may be the only option.
Tower Systems is more than a POS software company. We are retailers too. We cherish the relationships with our retail business customers. We will help whenever and wherever we can to help small and independent retail businesses survive challenges and grow.
If your retail business is in tough times and facing imminent closure, you may be able to save it if you act quickly and ruthlessly. Based on years of working with many different retailers, I have found that some basic steps can successfully turnaround a business in trouble. But you need to be ruthless.
Crucial to saving a business from closure is to understand why it is in this situation. You have to be honest with yourself about this. How did it get to this?
Do not be afraid or ignorant in confronting these questions.
Make an honest appraisal of the state of the business as the truth can inform what you do next.
You have to own your situation. This means being realistic about what you face and what got you there. This is important as it opens you to what you need to do to resolve the situation, to rehabilitate your business.
Now, to the urgent steps you could take to avoid the closure of your retail business:
This is a tiny snippet of advice we provide in this area, advice we share with our customers as a service beyond the POS software itself. Our advice has been developed over years of serving many different types of retail businesses. It is advice we have seen appreciated by many types of shops.
Never give up. Fight hard and fight smart to turn your business around.
Facing tough circumstances in retail can be like the deer in the middle of the road at night facing the headlights of an oncoming vehicle. Don’t freeze. Take action to mitigate your situation. A series of small steps could be the difference between closure and trading out of the problem.
We are grateful for the plenty of views of this video we published last month in which we discuss some of the enhancements to our small business POS software in recent years. The feedback from the video has been terrific. We are grateful to have welcomed new customers for our POS software as a result.
Thanks to smart hooks in the Tower Systems small business POS software, we are able to help local small business indie retailers and their suppliers work more closely and efficiently together.
The hooks include easy and accurately two-way flow of data, thereby enabling more timely and accurate supply of inventory to retailers and through this a strengthening of the supplier relationships.
Delivering this through a seamless, data-driven, relationship is key to both the retailer and wholesaler businesses. This is where good POS software shines, helping both sides of the commercial relationship to benefit. It sits at the heart of a good commercial relationship and feeds mutual respect.
Our POS software is a beautiful glue for retailers and wholesalers who appreciate working together.
The connections we offer have been built into our POS software to worldwide data sharing EDI standards. This ensures that they will serve the needs of larger businesses with more rigid IT infrastructure. This is important where small business retailers need to connect with IT systems in large business suppliers. The Tower systems approach means that small business retailers are not disadvantaged.
Through or work in this area of seamless two-way data flow, we are able to help smaller wholesalers walk the path of better IT connection with small business retailers. There are many case studies we can share showing the success of this work. regardless of internal systems in use in wholesale businesses, we are usually able to help them take the steps necessary to achieve a beneficial connection.
Our work in the area of EDI for retailers in channels such as fishing and tackle stores, produce businesses, bike shops, garden centres, jewellers and newsagencies is well established and consistent.
Tower Systems is committed to helping independent small business retailers to compete effectively and successfully in a rapidly changing retail landscape in-store and online. We do this by providing best practice software backed by friendly, human and local support, helping retailers to compete and to enjoy their businesses.
EDI is key in retail today for retailers and wholesalers who want an efficient apply chain. Tower Systems is ready to help both sides of the EDI relationship.
Local gift shops are vital for local communities, offering access to gifts that are thoughtfully selected and displayed. These small business retail shops are in a competitive space both in-store and online.
Tower Systems, through its gift shop software, helps these local small businesses compete … through guiding efficiency, reducing mistakes, helping to reach out to past customers and with a loyalty solution that can be tailored to the needs of the business.
This gift shop software has evolved over the years to serve the evolving needs of local gift shops. More recently, the focus has been on webstore integration. the gift shop software integration with Shopify is especially sweet and seamless, helping local gift shops to sell online, anywhere and easily.
Tower Systems has developed plenty of Shopify websites connected to the POS software from the company, including these websites connected to the gift shop software:
There are plenty more than these, developed in-house by Tower Systems to the requirements and specifications provided by the retailers themselves.
If you run a local gift shop and being local matters to you, our locally made and locally supported gift shop software may be of interest. We are grateful that hundreds of gift retailers use our software already, and help it continuously evolve.
Find out more at www.towersystems.com.au/gift.
Take a quick look at: https://vimeo.com/455694613
Watch a one-hour demonstration: https://vimeo.com/571958406
From sales to special orders to pre-orders, from Xero integration to Shopify integration, from loyalty that works to easy shopper postcode tracking, from smart ways to pitch shop local to featuring locally made products … our gift shop software is made for gift retailers, made to help you enjoy your business more.
See it for yourself. Talk to one of our gift shop software specialists by calling 1300 662 957 or emailing sales@towersystems.com.au.
Local gift shops serve local communities with what they expect local will love and want to give to others. This is what Tower systems does, too – developing POS software for gift shops they will love and want to use locally in their shop.
The best solution for a local business will be the one from a local business that itself gets being local.
With retail back around the counter, Boxing Day 2021 is set to be the big. here at Tower systems, we are helping retailers who use our POS software to prep fort an awesome Boxing Day Sale.
Using our PSO software, retailers can manage offers and deals designed to maximise the value of a Boxing Day Sale. We help local small business retailers compete in a busy and noisy retail space.
We made a video recently in which we looked at what we think stands out in our POS software. here it is …
Local small business retailers are asked to support local schools, community groups and charities on an almost daily basis. While community groups and charitable organisations beat a path to the doors of local businesses, so do individuals engaged on personal fundraising of their own for a cause or for an other individual.
It is tough making the call about which organisation to support or not for there is a real fear that declining will hurt the business. Often, small business retailers do not look for an uptick in business from a charity support decision but they do worry about a decline.
So how do you choose which local business you support?
Requests from schools, charities and other community for donations can be a challenge for any size business. If you do not take a structured approach to this you will find yourself giving away plenty for little or no return.
Requests are often loaded with guilt. People can be passive aggressive in their approach. Often, people requesting help leverage pester power. It can be hard to say no. There are too many stories of retailers giving a gift as a prize, receiving the Thank You poster and achieving no benefit for the business.
Our advice is to manage your philanthropy as you would any business activity.
THE PRIZE / GIFT
Decide the amount in cash or product value or both that you are prepared to donate in a full year, calendar year or financial year.
Our recommendation is you give away cash, but in the form of a voucher to spend in your business. This ensures that value of the gift or prize is greater than the cost of it to your business.
The best mechanism for giving away cash or an amount to spend in-store is to do it by way of a gift voucher. Use your software to manage this as any manual approach is dangerous and time-consuming.
YOUR PITCH, NOT THEIRS
Get on the front foot and write to local community groups outlining that you budget a year in advance. Seek their submissions. With this advice sheet we have included the text of a suggested letter. Please read the letter as it outlines the approach we suggest and why. It is important you communicate this with all community groups.
On the page after the letter is a suggested notice for use in-store when you are asked for donations.
HOW TO PICK GROUPS TO SUPPORT
Focus on community groups that support you. That is, groups with members who support you. The more they support you the better you are able to support the community.
Be prepared to ask where people shop for the items you sell in your business. Ask if they will change in return for your support.
Asking these questions underscores to you the importance of approaching the decision as a business decision.
Be thoughtful and deliberate. Support the groups that support you. This is important as it helps you stay within a budget.
LET YOUR SHOPPERS CHOOSE
If you run discount vouchers and if customers say they don’t want the voucher, invite them to contribute the voucher to a local group – one of three you setup for in the business. Every month, two months or three months, tote up the vouchers and give the group a parentage of the total voucher value ‘voted’ for them.
This idea could be in addition to any giving program you run in the business. It offers a daily reminder of your commitment to local giving.
Grill’d burgers run a program kind of like this where each shopper is given a bottle cap, which they place in a tub to vote on a group to receive a cash donation for the month. The process of groups submitting to be considered is onerous. You can find out more about that program with this link – it is a good place to research what others do: https://www.grilld.com.au/localmatters/
REWARD ENGAGEMENT
In addition to any direct gift, consider an offer whereby anyone who is a member of the group who shops with you accrues an amount you donate to the group. You could manage this through your software. It could be you offer a discount to the shopper as well as accruing a value for the group.
This type of program could also be in addition to your core giving program as the value here is driven by sales – hopefully, incremental sales.
EDUCATE GROUPS ABOUT GOOD ENGAGEMENT
Here are things groups you support can do to help your business. You should ask them to do these things:
WRITE ABOUT YOUR ENGAGEMENT
Once you have a decision on which groups you will support, write about this in your newsletter and on Facebook. Not just once but multiple times. Invite them to provide you with content to publish too. Talk about their good works.
Ask them to write about you too.
Your giving has to serve your heart and serve your business. Going about it in a structured way will ensure you meet your objectives.
In the Tower Systems POS software, small business retailers can tap into terrific holiday season help. This can be in the form of inventory buying guidance, marketing help, co-location assistance and shopper nudging support … plus more.
Helping small business retailers with holiday season facilities is an important role for any POS software. It is something Tower Systems has offered it’s thousands of small business retailer POS software customers for decades. Over time, the holiday season advice and tips have evolved, as have economic and consumer needs.
Leveraging holiday season inventory guidance, for example, retailers can make more informed purchase decisions that better serve the needs of the business based on prior holiday season experience and taking into account trends from this year.
Oh, and when we are talking here about the holiday season in retail, we are talking about holiday seasons like Christmas, Easter, Black Friday, Father’s Day, Mother’s Day, Christmas in July, back to School. You see, a holiday season in retail is any season that a retail business can respond to in any to leverage the business opportunity and serve niche customer need.
Holiday seasons in retail do not necessarily have to be the holiday season you think of in a traditional sense.
Using our POS software, beyond knowing what to stock for a holiday season, our retail business partners are able to make shop floor decisions that guide shopper engagement with the holiday season product opportunity ties. These could be loyalty, price, packaging, bundling or post purchase re-visit invitation. these and more can be leveraged thorough the Tower Systems specialty retail POS software.
Leveraging the surge in traffic that a retail business sees from the holiday season can be key to through the year growth, benefiting the business between holiday season shopper traffic peaks. This is key to any retail business achieving a smoother sales flow. While a spike in shopper traffic and revenue are good, less of a spike makes management of a retail business easier and more cost friendly.
Tower Systems, using its considerable retail experience, can help small business retailers cross the divide between tech and real world to offer a better and more beneficial holiday season experience. That is our goal in the software we develop and the advice we provide through our customer help desk.
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 POS software solutions.
Developed originally for jewellers, the serial num her tracking facilities have been found to be useful for bike retailers, farm supply businesses, firearms dealers and selected other specialty retail settings.
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.
The area of quote and invoice management varies between types of retail businesses.
Through its work with garden centres, jewellers, farm supply businesses, landscape supply businesses and pool maintenance businesses POS software company Tower Systems has found some similarities. It has developed software to serve these common needs.
While not the deepest and most sp[ecialist solution, it is cost-effective and useful ion a variety of situations, as our customers how us.
here is a recent video from us in which some of our team discuss and show quote and invoice management facilities in our Tower Systems POS software:
Whether your shop is big or small and your quote and invoice management needs are complex or simple, these tools from Tower Systems are part of the software for a range of specialty retail marketplace versions of our POS software. The key is to see if they fit your needs. The Tower team would be grateful to personally demonstrate them to you.
We are grateful to have shared a very special Christmas POS software offer with a range of marketplaces through beautiful Aussie designed and made postcards.
We are grateful to be hiring for our help desk. If you know someone with good small business retail experience and good tech skills, please have them make contact: mark@towersystems.com.au.
We are grateful to the views from local small business retailers who have engaged with our new POS software YouTube channel.
here is the link to the Youtube channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCrSQkP8ee91L-oh7LJgGwcw/videos
In-store and online, Tower Systems helps fishing and outdoors shops connect with shoppers and add value to your contact with those who love fishing. Our software has wonderful opportunities through which you can demonstrate your point of difference and nurture helping customers create memories fishing.
Here are some websites we have created for fishing and outdoors businesses – they are connected to our POS software:
This QR code will take you to a video of a new demonstration of our software. This demonstration covers some of what’s unique in our software.
Here are answers to some of the questions we have been asked about our Fishing and Outdoors Business POS Software over the years
When you are ready, we’d love to show you our Fishing and Outdoors Business POS Software and through that show you answers to other questions you have.
Can I connect the software to a scale to sell bait by weight? Yes.
Can I sell products in fraction units, like 1.25? Yes.
Can you pass on local fishing maps and information? Yes, you can load files, images, documents or PDFs for products (information sheets, advice, notices) and have them automatically included in emailed receipts.
Can I bundle items together like a rod, reel and line? Yes.
I sell at events away from the shop sometimes, can I do this with the software? Yes, using our Retailer RoamTM software you can sell anywhere, any time.
Does the software handle club member pricing? Yes, this can be a great marketing tool, getting local community group members support the business and fundraising at the same time.
Can I share local fishing and camping tips on receipts? Yes.
Can I set an age check on age restricted items? Yes.
Can I run BOGO pricing, buy 1 get 1 or similar? Yes.
Does the software let me manage my own time-based catalogue pricing? Yes.
Can I sell gift cards for my business? Yes.
Does the software have a facility for encouraging infrequent shoppers to spend more? Yes, it’s proven to work well at achieving this.
Does the software let me buy in bulk and break up to retail packs? Yes.
Does the software produce WAS / NOW price labels? Yes.
Can you manage quotes with the software? Yes, you can create quotes and then turn them into sales if they proceed.
Can you reach out to customers based on past purchases? Yes, you can select customers for marketing past on a range of criteria, including past purchases.
Does the system handle account customers? Yes, you can setup and manage customer accounts.
Does the system produce invoicing and statements? Yes, these can be printed or emailed.
Does the software track product serial numbers? Yes. You have a couple of different ways you can do this.
I sell clothing, can I manage this by colour, size and style? Yes.
Does the software connect with my website? We partner with Shopify, Magento and WooCommerce and offer direct links to these.
Can I email receipts? Yes.
Can I track where my customers come from? Yes.
Do I have to pay for software on additional computers in my business? No.
Can I connect with my EFTPOS terminal? Yes. We have a direct link to Tyro and through Linkly we connect to all major banks.
Can I use my existing hardware? Yes, as long as your hardware meets our minimum standards.
Can I use my existing data with the software? Yes. We’d like to check your data to be sure. We will advise what can be safely brought across.
Does it integrate with Xero? Yes.
Our fishing shop software links to Xero, Shopify and suppliers – we’ll work with any supplier to help you run a more efficient business.
To talk to one of our fishing shop software experts, please call 1300 662 957 or email sales@towersystems.com.au.
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