LightSpeed iPad POS Carves For Success at Saturdays NYC

Less than three years ago, Saturdays Surf NYC opened in SoHo, targeting a tribe of customers seeking a singular lifestyle. A lifestyle focused on surfing, living, and working in New York City.

Today the store carries a line of private-label apparel, surf boards, wetsuits, and accessories. A cafe and espresso bar near the entrance serves high-end coffee, and a garden hidden in the back offers customers a break from the hustle and bustle of the city outside. The combination of quality products and atmosphere led the magazine GQ to label Saturdays NYC as "the coolest store in America."

The co-owners of Saturdays embody the vibe of their store, and when they got things up and running, hoped they could find a way to integrate their personal technology choices in their business.

"When we opened the store, (we) were all using Macs in our personal lives," Saturdays co-owner Morgan Collett said. "A lot of times with business-related projects, it's assumed you have to (use) PC(s), but we really wanted to use Macs in our everyday business."

The Challenge

At the beginning, Saturdays deployed a basic point-of-sale (POS) system with limited functionality. But as they discovered, these starter systems often lack the ability to expand as sales increase and the number of products multiplies.

They needed a powerful POS interface that could handle both a wholesale side and a retail side without splitting up the inventory, all the while holding out hope that the solution wouldn't look out of place in their trendy store.

The Solution

So in 2010, they got in touch with AMP Retail Solutions, a certified LightSpeed reseller. Built on a Mac platform, LightSpeed (and LightSpeed for iPad) has the power of a traditional PC-based POS system with the aesthetics Apple is known for.

Similar in appearance to the iTunes interface, LightSpeed allows Saturdays to upload and view their store inventory using photos, showcasing the beauty of their products even on a computer screen.

When the LightSpeed for iPad POS became available, the owners of Saturdays jumped at the chance to add mobility to their system on the hottest and coolest technology platform available.

The Benefits of LightSpeed for iPad POS

Employees and owners alike praise the versatility and features of LightSpeed for iPad POS.

"It's so much easier - we can help our customers anywhere in the store, do invoices (and) process credit card payments," sales associate Angus Mcintosh said. "(With) just a few taps on the iPad, the customer's out the door with everything they love and we know (the transaction has) been done right."

A feature called "Show and Tell" produces up to five high-resolution images of products that may be too big or bulky to keep on the sales floor. Saturdays uses Show and Tell to give customers a closer look at the surfboards currently available, without having to haul the boards up from the basement storeroom.

Since every product can be displayed on the iPad POS, the technology lures customers in and simplifies the sales process. And the intelligence of the POS platform as a whole, means that LightSpeed can tell the user which products are selling quickly and which are lagging behind.

"LightSpeed for iPad (POS) has really helped us out in a huge way and taken the store to a whole different level," Mcintosh said.

About LightSpeed

Based in Canada, Light Speed offers retailers a comprehensive suite of tools tailored to the Mac platform. With nearly 400 resellers in 25 countries, in addition to a direct sales team, the company targets single-store, small-to-medium size retail chains, and online retailers over a wide spectrum of verticals. The majority of their users adopted the LightSpeed POS system when they first opened their retail business.

The LightSpeed POS solution features the Apple Cover Flow technology that gives users the ability to browse customers and products graphically, reducing errors and the incidence of fraud. With a look and feel similar to Apple's iTunes, the back office functions require just a click, drag, and drop.

The LightSpeed Web Store gives retailers the option of adding on a fully customizable ecommerce site using their existing LightSpeed database.

LightSpeed's suite of tools includes ordering and invoicing capabilities, label and bar code printing, reporting, inventory management, customer profiling and tracking, credit-card processing, gift cards, multi-store lookups, and stock transfers.

About AMP Retail Solutions

Located in New York state, reseller AMP Retail Solutions helped Saturdays deploy the LightSpeed for iPad POS solution. The owners of Saturdays turned to AMP for help based on the reseller's encyclopedic knowledge of Apple products.

Watch this video for more details about how AMP Retail Solutions helped Saturdays NYC select and implement the LightSpeed for iPad POS system.

For more on the store, visit Saturdays Surf NYC.

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