Changing from Cash Register to POS for my Consignment Shop

I have been running my antique consignment shop for almost 10 years now. For the most part we have been running on paper with a cash register that take care of customer transactions and a receipt book to tracking all items that come in from our consignees. Between these two methods and my sister in law that would come in once a month to do my accounting and reconciliation I was very comfortable with how I ran my business.

That was up until about 4 months ago when we decided to finally move to a bigger location. We saw an opportunity to do more furniture consignment and advertising through different online venues such as craigslist.

So my husband and I found a great space just one block off of our town's main street. We were very pleased as we knew we would get additional foot traffic. The move went smoothly for all of our items. But I couldn’t say the same for all of my important paper work. This really threw me for a loop and caused immeasurable backtracking. My son happened to be in town for a weekend and helped me out a lot. He was happy to help, but not happy about the amount of stress this little snafu caused me.

He went online and found a point of sale software company that had experience with consignment stores called Cafe Cartel. I was not excited about the idea, as I am not that computer savvy, but considering what my son went through for me on his vacation I knew I at least owed him an open mind.

He returned the following weekend to help me get all of my inventory and consignee information uploaded into the computer. From there we did a couple days of training and I felt pretty confident to give it a go. He called me up a few days into the week to see how I was doing. I told him that I didn’t know how I had ran my store before this POS System. It made everything so much easier, I was better able to concentrate on other areas of my business and I even started a loyalty program. My sister in law was extremely happy too and told me she used to have to brace herself to come in and help me every month.

I decided to share my story, because I know there are a lot of store owners out there that are on the fence about upgrading their systems to newer technology. For me it seemed like more trouble than it was worth but now I see that it was one of the best investments I could make as a business owner, wife and mother. A big thank you to my son, Andrew, and Cafe Cartel.

- Gale M. - Consignment Shop Owner

Consignment Store Software Benefits Resale Clothing and Exchange Clothing Stores

• Send commission statements by email to consignees
• Get rid of paper by switching to point of sale
• make taxes easier
• eco friendly
• Can run payout reports
• Keep track of all consignees with customer profiles
• Just pull up profile and enter in items and payout