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The short answer is no, not only do you not need one but you don’t want one until you have your fifth store open. Here’s why; POS systems fulfill a need when reordering the same products over and over again. Companies like Walgreen’s or pet stores are well suited for POS systems as the vast majority of the merchandise is reordered over and over and over again.
Reordering the same merchandise is NOT our business. One of the critical factors to success is purchasing fresh new merchandise each and every week, and upwards of 75% of every order should be new goods! Why, because this is a variety store business, what we call fun shopping. Yes, customers want to rely on you to always carry the high value, high use items like shampoos, lotions, snack foods…. but then they want to have fun by shopping the new stuff. This fills up the shopping cart as customers know if they see something new they better buy it now because it may not be here the next time they shop the store.
The time it takes to load the POS with all the new merchandise is substantial and the fact is you will not reorder a good percentage of the merchandise because your focus is on what is new. So, with a POS you take considerable time to load the computer, to be able to generate usage reports only to end up not using the information because your focus is on what new merchandise you should buy this week. So, the next week when you order all the new merchandise you get to load it into the POS to again not use the benefit of the system.
Why do you need a POS when your fifth store is open? The answer is at this level of volume you will be buying truckloads of core product and will ship it to your distribution center (warehouse). The POS will allow you to automatically ship desired quantities of core product to each of your stores, as needed. Here, the POS makes sense.
Our program offers a simple, comprehensive manual system that allows a store owner to place weekly orders in just a few hours per week, far less time than it takes to just load the new product into your POS system.
