If you carry a lot of similar products with different options, inventory can be hard to manage. We’re excited to announce that TAKU now has the ability for you to create products with variants to group similar goods that are sold with different options such as color or size.
Product with variants, sometimes known as matrix products, allow retail stores to manage every unique combination of options as its own “variant product.”
Every variant product has its own “child SKU,” with its own inventory and price, while sharing attributes with an associated “parent SKU.” Variant products help stores track inventory more accurately. But they are most important for e-commerce or self-check kiosks as they allow shoppers to select different options from the same product page.
While it’s common for cloud-based retail systems to have many limitations on how product variants can be created, we’ve built TAKU to be super flexible and easy to use. Compared to other platforms, TAKU lets you:
Create new matrix products with up to 4 options (e.g. size, color, etc.) with unlimited unique “variants” or combinations
Add or combine existing single products into new parent SKUs while keeping past sales history
Unlink “child” products from an existing “parent” SKU and continue to sell them as single products, again while keeping past sales history
Easily make “parent” or “child” products inactive when options are discontinued
What makes it even easier? While product details of parent SKUs are automatically applied to child products when adding new options. Certain details, such as stock quantities, price and images of child products, can be adjusted for each SKU as well.
Learn more about how you can start using our flexible product matrix feature by checking out our TAKU help articles here.
October to December marks the peak shopping season for retail stores. It’s a time when many retailers plan for an increase in shoppers. As the world moves out of the global pandemic, retailers need to be ready for customers with new shopping behaviors.
Pre-Holiday
According to a Google study, 70% won’t consider purchasing something without seeing it online: whether it is an ad, browsing through a website, social media, or email newsletter. This means that retailers need to start ramping up on their online efforts early: whether it is sending weekly newsletters or updating social media on a regular basis, “online storefronts” are more important than ever to shoppers.
People often flip between discovery (window-shopping) and shopping (looking for products mainly based on functions or features) until they are ready to make a purchasing decision. Of the two, discovery is more emotional and can often override the rational thinking behind shopping. Which is why online “pre-shopping” discovery is so important to the entire shopping process now.
A Statista survey showed that up to 50% of people are planning to do their holiday shopping in-stores. This means that retailers need to be ready to showcase new merchandise and discounts online to shoppers even before they make it to the stores.
In 2020, up to 79% of people left their holiday shopping until one-week before Christmas. This is good news for retailers because they are able to push their efforts to the very last minute. The same study showed that 64% of shoppers planned to shop in-stores. After more than a year of restrictions, people are eager to get out. This is great for physical stores that are able to target shoppers when they’re nearby.
Convenience plays a huge role in purchasing decisions today. “Now near me” searches have grown 100% worldwide. Options for store-managed e-commerce have also increased a lot. Because some shoppers will always leave holiday shopping until the last minute, local stores have a major advantage. After all, everybody has experienced shipping delays given the increase in online shopping. Instead, more local shoppers are searching for ways to buy online and pickup in store (BOPIS) to avoid delays.
The key to successfully offering store pickup for online orders is inventory accuracy. This means using store operations software that offers real-time stock information in-store and online. One way to make sure that your store appears online is to use Google’s free product listings and Local Inventory Ads (LIA). Learn more about how to increase foot traffic to stores with Google here.
For last minute shoppers, retailers can offer store pickup. Not only does this avoid delivery delays, it helps encourage shoppers to purchase extra items when they come to the store for their orders. Make sure that your order pickup area is well-merchandised with suitable impulse products. And consider switching to an order pickup system that will allow staff to checkout customers. There’s nothing worse than losing sales from a in-store shopper just because a customer doesn’t want to line up again to pay.
Post-Holiday
13% of all retail purchases end up being returned. This means that retailers could be juggling huge losses in January. In the US, 1.75 million packages were returned in January 2021, and that does not include returns in store!
Modern POS systems are packed with great features that help retailers sell products more easily. While cloud-based features have gotten closer to older point-of-sale systems, many basic cloud POS today still can’t handle selling in fractional quantities.
This is a feature that many cloud POS systems don’t build into their core features, leaving it to others to build add-on plugins. While it’s great to have extra options through plugins, these extra costs can really add-up. At the same time, when something doesn’t work, it’s hard to know which software caused the issue.
Food products are commonly sold by fractional quantities
For this reason, more retailers are looking to use all-in-one cloud POS systems with built-in core functions such as selling in fractional quantities,
What are fractional quantities?
Bulk Barn, an a popular Canadian retailer that sells in fractional quantities (Source)
Fractional quantities (or decimal quantities) are used by retailers that sell products that are sold in different amounts to each customer. For example, if you sell cheese by weight or DIY fabric by length. Products like this are sold in bulk, not pre-packaged. The final weight or length needed is only known when a shopper is buying in-store or online. As such, the price of these products are set to a unit of measure (e.g. $ per lb or foot) and the final selling price is only calculated during checkout.
What kind of products are best for fractional quantities?
Fabrics are a great example of a product sold in fractional quantities (Source)
Here are some examples of products that require fractional quantities:
Bread and bakery products
Meat, seafood, or produce
Ingredients such as spices, flour, sugar, oils, etc.
Raw materials for construction, assembly or production
Supplements, beauty supplies or candy
Landscaping or garden materials
Fabric or stationary sold by size
Any item sold in bulk
Services that are charged by the hour
and many more
How do I sell fractional quantities?
Tomatoes being sold by weight
If you need to sell in fractional quantities, you will need to make sure that your POS system supports inventory quantities and sell prices to the decimal place required.
Besides being able to handle fractional quantities (e.g. 0.75 lbs) and prices (e.g. $2.765), if you sell high value bulk products, you need to be able to sell in smaller units for accuracy. For example, if you sell expensive products such as gold or saffron. With these, it is common to sell to the 4th decimal (e.g. 2.7683 grams of gold) as very small quantities can cost a lot.
While selling in bulk is a common retail feature, many basic cloud systems don’t handle it to the required decimal and will automatically apply rounding. This is where modern cloud systems such as TAKU come in. They are designed to allow retailers to accurately set prices and track stock quantities so that they can make more money.
Many people think that shipping out an order is the same as ‘fulfilling it’. In reality fulfilling an order means much more than shipping a package out. In retail, the term “fulfillment” refers to everything a retailer does from the moment a customer places an order. While many think that order fulfillment means shipping out online order from a warehouse (this is likely because of Amazon fulfillments centers), this is actually only one of many ways to get orders to a customer.
For example, retailers with existing physical stores can also fulfill online sales by packing online orders for in-store pickup. In comparison, in-store pickup is generally a lot cheaper than shipping online orders out from a warehouse as you don’t need to pay for packing materials or shipping fees.
As we’ve mentioned – fulfilling orders includes the process of receiving an order then getting it to the customer. It can also include supply chain tasks such as inventory management, quality control and customer support as part of order fulfillment.
The term “order fulfillment” tends to sound complex and seems only suitable for very large businesses. In reality, fulfillment is something businesses have been doing for decades now. In the past, customers often made orders through phone calls, fax machines, or even coming into the store. Stores would prepare these orders for pickup or ship out. In other words, stores had to “fulfill” these orders.
The difference today is that most order fulfillment is for ecommerce and that most retailers have a catalog of their products online because shoppers expect to be able to see what products a store carries. This is why it is so important to have an online catalog that shows off all your merchandise. While an online store is great, having any product showcase (e.g. Google’s free See What’s In Store feature) helps nearby stores be found online. And a modern omnichannel retail system makes it easy and fast to display POS products online in a few clicks.
While there are many different steps in order fulfillment, the main ones are:
Purchasing goods from suppliers
Receiving goods that are purchased
Storing purchased goods until they are sold
Picking and packing goods when they are sold
Getting goods to customers
Most physical stores are familiar with steps 1 to 4. However, since the pandemic, the way many brick & mortar retailers are handling step 5 has changed. While merchants relied a lot on shippers and last-mile delivery services (e.g. DoorDash) in the beginning of the pandemic, as the cost of packaging materials and fuel surcharges has increased, more physical stores are looking at in-store fulfillment options today. For example, with BOPIS orders (buy online pickup in-store), ‘shipping out’ is replaced with customer self-pickup or in-store fulfillment.
It helps you compete with bigger ecommerce companies as you can give your local audience a custom and personalized experience during pickup
It’s faster for nearby shoppers to get their orders
It helps you get rid of shipping costs to send products out or return products
It helps you make bigger sales since shoppers often buy additional items during pickup
It lowers return costs as orders picked up in store have lower return rates
Some challenges around in-store fulfillment
In-store fulfillment isn’t all rainbows and sunshine. There are some challenges you need to be aware of if you are going to be fulfilling orders from in-store. Here are some roadblocks you may face:
The need to change the store layout to make it faster for pickup shoppers
The need for better back office processes to allow for quick picking and packing once an order is received
Linking data between store POS systems and online stores
Many POS systems do not offer the tools needed to track everything you need for in-store fulfillment. Modern omnichannel POS systems such as TAKU make order fulfillment a breeze. They make it possible for you to:
Manage all of your in-store and online inventory in one place
Sell any inventory in your POS online with just a few clicks
Always know exactly how much available inventory stock you have with real-time on-hand quantity
Automatically showcase products and real-time stock availability in Google searches, Facebook Shop or Instagram Shop
These are just a couple of the benefits retail stores will gain from using a modern cloud-based system today. Click here to learn more about how TAKU can help you save money and sell more today.
Confused by some words in the retail industry? Read up on the essential retail terms and their definitions with our Retail Glossary here!
Although the word omnichannel is often used in retail, it is a term that is often misunderstood. Here is an explanation of what omnichannel means, how it works, and how it can help you increase your profits.
Sales channels refer to every different method used by retailers to sell their products to customers. Sales channels go beyond brick & mortar stores. Other sales channels could be events, trade shows, resellers, dealers, curbside pickup, and on-the-go pickup. Additionally, sales channels can also include social media (Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, TikTok), SMS, instant messaging, and even Google Ads.
Most retailers start off selling on a single channel. This can be a physical brick and mortar store or an online only webstore. Prior to the pandemic, an increasing number of retailers have started to add new sales channels to their businesses as shoppers now expect to be able to shop and pre-shop in more than one place.
2. What is omnichannel?
Omnichannel is a fully-integrated retail experience for shoppers. So when omnichannel works, it means customers will have the same experience no matter which sales channel they use. A customer who buys products from a brick & mortar store should have the same experience as one who uses social media channels to buy products. This is the ideal outcome for a successful omnichannel retail business.
What many retailers aren’t as familiar with, is that retailers must use a system that can share sales, inventory, and customer information (data) across all sales channels to be able to offer omnichannel retail. This means handling all store sales and fulfillment of online orders under a single login. In particular, omnichannel systems make store-managed e-commerce such as “buy online pickup in-store” a lot more efficient.
A successful system handles data for sales, inventory and customer information across all brick & mortar stores, online storefronts, ecommerce marketplaces, mobile channels/apps (WhatsApp), and social media commerce (Facebook or Instagram Shop). You should be able to sell to your customers no matter where they shop. In the past, omnichannel systems were expensive and only available to very large retailers. However, today’s modern cloud systems have made it possible for small-to-mid-sized retailers to take advantage of the cost-savings and sales boosting benefits of omnichannel retail.
3. What is the difference between multichannel & omnichannel?
It’s important not to confuse omnichannel with multichannel, despite their similarities. Like omnichannel, multichannel refers to retailers selling to customers through different sales channels. Yet, in a multichannel setup, these channels are not integrated.
Unlike omnichannel, multichannel does not unify the customer experience. And more importantly, multichannel retail costs merchants a lot more money because they need to log into separate tools or channels to manage inventory separately, or see sales and customer history. This is a time-consuming process that can lead to lost sales and errors. It also increases the complexity of your sales and tax management. Additionally, multichannel increases the cost of managing inventory if sales are being fulfilled from the store or the same place.
Multichannel retail costs a lot more money to run because a retailer needs to manage her or his business in separate tools or channels.
4. Why is omnichannel retail important?
Omnichannel selling offers a data-driven approach to retail. As stock levels change, you will want to know the product levels in every channel. A good omnichannel system will do this automatically. This means you will never have to manually manage stockouts. A good omnichannel system will also increase sales by highlighting your best customers across all sales channels. It will focus on faster fulfill of every sale, no matter where the sale originates.
Omnichannel systems are increasingly effective at attracting people to brick & mortar locations. They do this by linking to Google to drive foot traffic to stores based on how close nearby shoppers are to available stock. This increases overall profits by increasing in-store and sales conversion rates.
The goal is a memorable and positive experience for your customers. Omnichannel can make this happen.
TAKU Retail can provide you with a comprehensive and integrated omnichannel strategy that will remove friction between channels. Because TAKU is cloud-based, it can function on any device since it’s not tied to any specific type of hardware. This enables you to use any existing web-enabled devices from desktop computers or tablets to smartphones.
TAKU can not only help you increase sales and reduce operational costs, but it can also help you get in front of shoppers before they even leave their homes. Click below to find out about other ways TAKU Retail can help you achieve a successful omnichannel system for your business.
Shoppers now expect the perk of Buy Online Pick Up In-Store to be a given. However, you need to consider the operations of your retail business before you can offer BOPIS. Without support from modern retail software, BOPIS runs the risk of decreasing customer satisfaction.
Being able to find exactly what they want at the price point they need will undoubtedly thrill shoppers. However, if the second half of the process falls short of expectations, it will drive customers to search elsewhere and put the business lower on their list of trusted retailers.
1. Accurate inventory information without extra staff
Retail expert Suzanne Sears notes that more and more consumers are feeling confident about returning to in-person shopping. She says “Pent-up savings among consumers, who have greater access to products than services, are making purchases. This has created a demand for work in warehousing, shipping, supply chain, buying, stores, e-commerce, and right on through the entire operation.” This has significantly impacted the search for qualified new hires. Staffing shortages have become a widespread problem. Businesses across North America are not only struggling to find employees but also struggling to keep them around.
Reduced staff means there are fewer employees available to manually track inventory across multiple systems. Understaffed stores cannot handle these challenges, resulting in inventory accuracy as low as 70%. This means that at any given time, nearly a third of inventory stock can be inaccurate. This is especially true with high-traffic or high-inventory stores, many of which are understaffed today. In order to offer BOPIS successfully, retailers will have to invest in a system with real-time inventory across all sales channels. This will let them provide the type of inventory availability accuracy that today’s shoppers expect.
2. Automatically attract more local customers
The best omnichannel systems today will not only help retailers effectively offer Buy Online Pick Up In-Store, they will help them automatically attract more nearby shoppers. Because real-time omnichannel solutions such as TAKU are able to provide reliable, accurate inventory information and real-time stock availability, they are able to connect to local marketing tools to automatically drive more foot traffic in store.
Omnichannel systems such as TAKU help retailers manage all of their inventory across all sales channels with a single, smart product feed . The feed can then be connected to Google Merchant Center and Google My Business. This integration is a built-in feature of TAKU that automatically helps retailers can be found more easily on Google. By plugging their store inventory into a free product showcase called ‘See What’s In Store’, retailers can easily show real-time stock availability in store. Where before large retailers would need to hire agencies or staff to upload products into Google manually, modern omnichannel systems are able to do this without any data entry and stock levels update instantly as you sell in-store or online.
TAKU Retail helps you automatically showcase your products onGoogle
The retail market is increasingly competitive, retailers need proper inventory management to compete. A system that automatically updates all stock quantity info right away (no matter where or when the sale takes place) is essential. That is why retailers will need to make investments in modern inventory systems. It will allow them to ensure they have properly implemented BOPIS.
See How TAKU Can Help With Seamless BOPIS
TAKU is a single retail platform that will put you in the driver’s seat. It enables you to manage all of your in-store and online operations in a single place. Whether you have 5,000 or 100,000 SKUs, TAKU lets you quickly import customer and inventory data from your current POS, feed file, or e-commerce platform. Unlike other retail cloud platforms, TAKU is customizable and crazy fast in-store and online. With an easy-to-use design and built-in training tools, set-up is faster than many other systems. Never manage products or stock levels in different systems again.
Learn more about how TAKU works by clicking below.
