Retail and cloud technology have been courting for some time now, and as stores catch on to the mobile phenomenon they afford, we are seeing more and more great examples of innovative point-of-sale (POS). Vend customer Ali McIntosh, of Tessuti luxury gifts and homewares is just that, running her business with handheld, mobile devices powered by the cloud. We found out why she decided to free her store from the constraints of a traditional POS and front counter.

Ali introduced an iPad POS system after recognising that while Tessuti had achieved 22 years of successful business, in order to secure even more years of service, it now needed to adjust to the times and meet the expectations of today’s consumers. Although at first daunted by the concept of running her store with new technology, Ali soon became comfortable with it,  “My daughter made me use Vend at first.” she said. “I didn’t grow up with this stuff and I wasn’t sure I wanted to take on technology like this. But it’s really easy now. And it really impresses all my friends.” Ali laughs.

Ali quickly found that there were many customer and staff focussed benefits that came from using mobile POS:

• Better store flow – “Not having a front counter puts less pressure on the customer. There’s nothing that lurks and draw focus from the rest of the shop. It’s so much easier to arrange the shop and keep a good flow.” Plus it saves space. “We can pop the iPad under the workbench when we gift wrap, which is often.”
• Modern company image – “Our customers are always interested in the fact that we run our POS on an ipad. It has the ‘cool’ factor and engages them in the process.”
• More personable sales – “Using the iPad is much more personal and doesn’t interrupt the sale,” says Ali. “We can take it to a customer looking at products (without taking them away from what they are wanting to buy) and look up what stock the other store is holding, and flick between Vend and our online store for visuals and other colour options. And offering to email customers a receipt if they require one is a great on the spot paper saving option.”
• Cheaper POS option – “Cost saving was another consideration for us as a small business when chose our POS.” Vend “is affordable.
• Unified management – “Investing in an iPad was worth it. We do everything from it. Run our music. We use iMessage to communicate with the other store. We run Vend and Shopify. It’s so tidy.”

Want to find out more about Vend’s retail platform? Read our supplier interview.