Why Furniture & Homeware Retail Needs A POS Solution?

2020 seems to not be a pleasant time for everyone, especially for retailers. Since it’s hardly a week until New Year, we must prepare for and look forward to 2021. You can start by writing a New Year’s resolution for yourself and for your business as a retailer. And we’re here to help you with your New Year’s resolution for your retail store! In today’s article, we’ll discuss the 4 reasons why you need a POS solution for furniture & homeware retail to ensure your business’s success. 

Flexible order fulfillment options

In this era we’re living, customers are demanding for more and more. They want more than the traditional way of purchasing pay and buy in-store. Below are 2 common order fulfillment options supported in a POS solution for furniture & homeware. 

Click-and-collect

One of the main reasons why brick-and-mortar stores in general and furniture & homeware stores in particular are closing down during 2020 is the COVID-19 pandemic. People are more and more cautious with direct human interaction and avoid staying outsides for too long. That’s when retailers have realized the importance of click-and-collect. It offers such a great way for customers to be able to browse as long as they want on the internet and still fulfills the gratification of walking out of a store with a purchase on their hand. Thus, furniture & homeware merchants can maintain their sales. 

Business owners and operators can offer and manage such a powerful and meaningful feature at ease with a POS solution for furniture & homeware retail. Click-and-collect in POS can be processed in a few steps:

• Sellers enable outlets to become pick-up locations
• Customers choose the pick-up location of their liking conveniently with the Google Map.

• Sellers process the click-and-collect order at ease following the steps:
  • Find the order to be picked up
  • After confirming the customer’s payment, the order’s payment information will be shown
  • Start packing the order
  • While packing, if there’s a problem with the order, you can cancel picking to stop the packing process at any time
  • Finish the packing process, confirm pack to let the customer know their order is ready for pick-up
  • When the customer successfully pick-up the package, complete the transaction

Home delivery

Since furniture and homeware can sometimes be really bulky such as a sofa or a set of dining tables and chairs, offering home delivery is a must. And managing shipping, and balancing and calculating shipping fees are always a pain point for merchants. That’s when a POS solution for furniture & homeware comes to the rescue. 

In the market, there are plenty of POS solution providers who partner with third-party logistics companies to ensure a better delivery experience. With such providers like DHL, FedEx, or Hermes Group, furniture & homeware retailers can have their shipping process taken care of by leading experts. As a result, it minimizes the risk and cost of missed deliveries.

Powerful e-commerce functionalities

One of the biggest threats against furniture & homeware retailers is from e-commerce players like Amazon and Wayfair. As e-commerce is emerging at a rapid pace, there have been some merchants trying to expand their e-commerce offerings. But let’s admit it: most furniture retailers are not experts in the digital space and lack the internal e-commerce experience to plan and execute comprehensive solutions. What they need is a POS solution for furniture & homeware retail.

The integration of POS and e-commerce platforms 

A POS system that integrates with e-commerce platforms has multiple benefits: 

• Build a well-functioning commercial website. 
• Create an omnichannel shopping experience while ensuring buyers get the desired product. 
• Allow click-and-collect.
• Equip staff members with all the proper tools and assistance they need to complete their tasks efficiently. 
• Integrate with e-commerce inventory in real-time for efficient inventory management.
• Expand e-commerce offerings.

Some of the most popular e-commerce platforms include Magento, Shopify, BigCommerce, and WooCommerce. 

ConnectPOS integrates with Magento, Shopify, and BigCommerce

Consumer apps

A consumer app (or shopping experience app) is no stranger to everyone. Particularly, a commercial consumer app is becoming more and more common to enhance customer shopping experiences. With that being so, it helps strengthen the relationship between sellers and customers, and boost sales performance. 

Every kind of mobile consumer app will do the job. However, a PWA (progressive web app) consumer app, supported by POS software, can optimize the user experience. Being the hybrid of a regular website and its mobile app, PWA has the good traits of both a website and a native app. It loads faster, requires updates less frequently, is less expensive than a native app while being able to reach a large number of users just like a website. Such a robust application empowers buyers to:

• View product information simply by scanning barcodes
• Order temporarily out-of-stock item
• Get personalized product recommendations
• Conveniently do self check-out, which helps both sellers and buyers save time

Convenient multi-store and multi-warehouse inventory management

“We’ve got stores literally five miles apart,”, said Love Furniture CEO Mack Peters. “With the global pandemic going on and the furniture shortage, we’re having a problem getting goods for our stores to stock all our stores and take care of our customers”. Not only does the pandemic prevent buyers from coming to furniture & homeware physical stores, but it also gives so much hard time for retailers to maintain the stock level in their multiple stores. According to The Detroit News, Loves Furniture will close 13 of its locations due to this reason. 

For such a situation, retailers might want to look for a POS solution for furniture & homeware retail. With the one that has a multi-store and multi-warehouse inventory management functionalities, business owners and operators can:  

• Create new stores and registers. It’s easy to create new stores or add more registers. Additionally, users can disable a store or register if they no longer need it.

• Manage multi-store and multi-warehouse. This feature is a must-have when you operate more than 1 store and warehouse, and each warehouse is supplying for more than 1 store or vice versa. It allows merchants to create warehouses and assign warehouses to each store. Moreover, merchants can change between stores at their fingertips. 
• Synchronize inventory in real-time. With real-time synchronization, all data are updated and synchronized on a real-time basis. Sellers can also set a low-stock alarm to make reorder in time. Thus, there’s no need to worry about overselling or running out-of-stock.  
• Provide advanced reports. It’s not easy to manage multiple stores. You can’t be at all places to manage at one time, especially when your stores are far from one another. So let an insightful reporting system in POS that can be accessed from anywhere at any time help you. 

Proper customer loyalty programs

Repeat customers are everything to businesses, particularly toys, hobbies & gifts retail. With that being said, merchants are adopting different methods to not only obtain but, more importantly, also retain customers. It can cost 5 times more to attract a new buyer than it does to nurture an existing one. Unfortunately, as of 2017, 50% of consumers stated that they were not loyal to specific furniture stores. 

As retailers are struggling with keeping their customers coming back, our suggestion is to adopt a POS solution for furniture & homeware with a built-in loyalty scheme. A built-in loyalty scheme feature can support various types of loyalty programs: 

• Point-based program (reward points). Customers can collect points by purchasing products, subscribing to a program, etc. The points then can be redeemed later for rewards like discounts, free merchandise, etc. 

• Tier-based program. The tiered program offers various rewards based on the milestones that customers reach. The more they spend, the higher tier they achieve, and the more benefits they receive.  
• Gift cards. This kind of program simply provides customers with gift cards as a token of loyalty. 

With a POS system coming with a loyalty extension, merchants can easily build a meaningful loyalty program and manage it in a breeze. 

• Decide on the type of loyalty integration
• Customize the loyalty program to fit business needs and demands
• Allow buyers to pay for their orders using reward points
• Let customers redeem loyalty points
• Keep track of customer’s reward points balance
• Get comprehensive customer loyalty reports and valuable  insights

A POS solution makes a great New Year’s resolution!

As we’re reaching the end of today’s article, a promising year is coming knocking at your door. And to get your retail business ready to seize every opportunity that comes in a brand new year, including adopting a POS system in your New Year’s resolution is a great start. A POS solution for furniture & homeware retail benefits business owners and operators like you in multiple ways:

• Flexible order fulfillment options including click-and-collect and home delivery
• Powerful e-commerce functionalities thanks to the integration of POS and e-commerce platforms, and consumer apps. 
• Convenient multi-store and multi-warehouse inventory management
• Proper customer loyalty programs

At this point, we might all agree on the essence of a POS solution for furniture & homeware retail. But “which POS solution provider to rely on?” is the real question here. 

ConnectPOS, a leading POS software for omnichannel retail, prides itself on having all the abilities and sources to develop a feature-rich, technologically advanced POS solution. No matter which industry you’re in, such a robust POS system like ConnectPOS can always be your supportive ‘side-kick’!Not quite persuasive yet? Book your 14-day completely free trial below to confirm it yourself! Should you have any questions, don’t hesitate to contact now!