Cloud-based point of sale platform for retailers ShopKeep POS has teamed-up with popular accessory maker Griffin to launch the ShopKeep Mobile, a handheld point of sale device that makes it super-easy to accept credit card payments.

“This is a complete handheld POS that is connected to the cloud. It’s everything you need to run your store – in your pocket,” said Jason Richelson, Founder & CEO, ShopKeep POS. “It also removes one of the worst parts of the retail experience for shoppers, which is waiting in line; and creates a more personal customer interaction by removing the counter as a barrier.”

The thing about this accessory is that it’s designed for the iPod touch rather than iPhone, making sure retailers can use it without big upfront expenses. It rocks an encrypted credit card swiper as well as laser barcode scanner to “ring-up sales right from the showroom floor.”

The two companies are targeting an array of different stores for ShopKeep Mobile, ranging from clothing boutiques to specialty retailers, which can maximize revenue per square footage by removing their counter and providing customers with a better shopping experience.

As part of the deal, ShopKeep Mobile users get full suite of reports, inventory management and QuickBooks integration via the BackOffice, customer database, ability to send receipts via email, discounts by $ or %, rapid item search, ability to turn tax on or off, printer and offline mode support.

We kinda like how this sounds. The idea to end the shopping process right on the floor (rather than waiting in line to pay for goods) does promise an improved experience that ultimately leads to increase sales.

The ShopKeep Mobile is in production beta, and if you want to know more – you can register your interest from here.

ShopKeep POS Partners With Griffin On ShopKeep Mobile Case For iPod touch

AppAdvice 

ShopKeep POS, a provider of cloud-based business management software for the retail and restaurant industries, recently surveyed more than 640 small businesses around the U.S., with most respondents stating they were optimistic about 2014.

According to ShopKeep, 94 percent of respondents expect to increase revenue this year, and 60 percent are planning to either increase marketing efforts or expand their product lines.

Other highlights from the survey include:

• 29 percent of respondents plan to increase their marketing efforts next year, and many plan to invest in their own marketing assets over traditional advertising.
• 53 percent plan to invest in a combination of email marketing campaigns and social media to extend their marketing reach, and 54 percent plan to invest in a new website or e-commerce presence.
• 82 percent of respondents believe a combination of great customer service, personal relationships and supporting a local neighborhood store is what keeps customers coming through the door, and will be key to success in 2014.
• 42 percent of respondents are already using real-time business data to make changes to their store within 24-hours.

“We are seeing an overall shift in the way small business owners are approaching their strategies for the New Year,” Jason Richelson, founder and CEO, ShopKeep POS, said in a news release. “They are starting to think big and take advantage of data, social media and DIY marketing to stay competitive, much more so than we have seen before. Cloud technology has really leveled the playing field for these retailers, and they are bullish about their plans for 2014.”

Seattle bakery The Confectional is now able to better understand its customers and stock its stores after switching over to a mobile point-of-sale system.

The cheesecake shop implemented ShopKeep’s mPOS in May 2012 and has since been able to better stock its four locations based on consumer preferences and other data from the mobile system. For instance, The Confectional dropped its coconut cherry chocolate and cookies and mint flavors after sales were not great for those specific cakes.

“ShopKeep has helped us greatly with our wholesale accounts and keeping track of those,” said Destiny Sund, co-owner of The Confectional, Seattle.

“It allows us to keep track of each customer in the system so that we can see who is ordering and how much, and this holiday season it’s been completely off the hook,” she said. “So we can easily track our biggest wholesalers and catering companies and see exactly what they’re ordering and what flavors they’re ordering.

“Our wholesale business has increased 35 percent this year over last year. ShopKeep helps us track it.”

Confectional upgrade
Before implementing ShopKeep’s POS, The Confectional used standard traditional cash registers. This meant that they did all tracking and managing by hand.

For instance, if someone bought a specific cheesecake, the register only took note of a general cheesecake as opposed to the specific flavor. After installing ShopKeep, the bakery was able to track individual flavors to see how each one was selling.

At first The Confectional tested out the mPOS in one store, but soon after the owners decided to roll it out in all four locations.

One capability that The Confectional has incorporated is the ability to send its customers receipts via email.

The owners are also able to check in on their shops remotely to see how sales are going.

Be prepared
The mobile POS helps The Confectional’s owners better prepare for demand. Each cheesecake is handmade and take 24 hours to make, so the owners can now better stock their shelves based on purchasing history and data, saving themselves the time and effort that went into making cakes that never got purchased.

Additionally, ShopKeep keeps track of The Confectional’s beverages and notifies them when supplies are getting low, so they can make a new order from Coca Cola.

The Confectional is also able to leverage information from ShopKeep to analyze the busiest time of day in different locations to better manage inventory.

For instance, the bakery now knows that the Single Mini Cheesecake is the best-selling cake in all four locations and that their busiest hours are right after lunch through 4 p.m. The owners can also tell that more than 95 percent of customers take their beverages to go, so they can better prepare in terms of the cups they buy.

“We knew that we need to upgrade our systems because we opened two locations in one year alone, and those old registers weren’t doing the job, so we looked into Dinerware, we looked into Square, Quickbooks,” Ms. Sund said.

“I found some YouTube videos put out by ShopKeep in my Google search — I just kind of stumbled upon it,” she said. “I watched the video and went, ‘Woah this could definitely work for our business,’ and it looked so easy.

“I’m a great baker, but not necessarily a great technical implementer. It looked like something I could do.”

Final Take
Rebecca Borison is editorial assistant on Mobile Commerce Daily, New York

Not to freak everyone out, but there are six fewer days than usual between Thanksgiving and Christmas this year. For shoppers, that means a tighter timeframe in which to negotiate parking lots and mall lines. According to the Washington Post, retailers have started the full court press on marketing for their most important season earlier than usual.

It’s like that scene in Gravity where the space shrapnel starts hurtling toward Sandra Bullock and she’s all, “Oh no, oh nononono.”

To cope — and by popular demand from its customers — ShopKeep POS is releasing a new version of its iPad-based sales management system to cut checkout time in retail locations. Retailers can now customize their register with color coded buttons and group products to jump between different categories more easily.

ShopKeep has also focused on receipt and order printing, a pain point that adds friction to the sales transaction. High volume restaurants can now print orders to multiple locations, like the kitchen and bar, while smaller retailers can print receipts and tickets to the same printer. They’re pretty sensible updates to ShopKeep’s platform, making life easier for the independent retailers that make up the majority of its user base.

In the coming year, however, ShopKeep is looking to add larger scale businesses to that roster as they move toward cloud services. As with these latest features, customization is a key part of that push.

At this point, about half of ShopKeep’s customers are quick serve restaurants, like bakeries, coffee shops, and food trucks. The other 50% tend to be boutiques, clothing stores, and pop ups. They’re the type of retailers who wold be inclined to adopt payment systems like Square.

“Our main competitors are Windows-based POS systems. Depending on the sophistication of the merchant, there’s PayPal or Square, but then they realize they need reporting and timeclocks and employee management. When you’re running a store you need retail management, not just payment. They’ll try those first and then move up to us,” ShopKeep founder Jason Richelson said.

Acquiring larger clients is a function of making ShopKeep’s system easily customizable through its API.

ShopKeep will provide the basic tools for payments, employee management, general ledger, and supplier management, and the retailer can then hire integrators to do custom work on top of that API. Retailers are able to use any payment and accounting providers they want; ShopKeep connects clients to payments, rather than serving as the payments provider.

“In three to five years we can be in a really large percentage of retail stores, very similar to what Salesforce did with CRM,” Richelson said. “It’s a very different world now. POS used to be very fragmented because someone had to install a server in your basement. It’s no longer a fragmented industry. There’s going to be a dominant player.”