Boo Retailers!! Halloween Is Here And Get Ready For The Holidays!
October 23, 2013
Every Halloween US consumers spend more than $2 Billion on Candy and $30 Million on pet costumes! While there is no data on how many dental fillings (or traumatized pets!) that translates to, those are scary numbers, and then the Holiday season follows fast! So, Retailers, are your store systems and POS hardware ready to make the most of upcoming sales surge?
An organized hardware manager should have plans in place to adjust to spikes in trade, and they play an important role in creating a satisfactory shopping experience for shoppers, with prompt payment processing and minimal lines.
Many stores add extra checkout registers during the Holidays, and spare POS inventory may need to be added. This should be tested in advance to make sure that it’s in full working order, and a depot can step in here to ease the additional workload, processing the checks and carrying any required repairs with a quick turnaround. They can also help with the logistical operation and send the additional hardware directly to your stores to save on your shipping costs and increase the responsiveness of your IT department.
A hardware manager may not just have to equip additional checkouts at short notice, but new temporary stores. The ‘pop up’ Holiday stores are common, and even though they may only be around for a couple of months of the year, they’re extremely popular and generate great returns. And all need to mirror the hardware infrastructure of traditional stores to appeal to shoppers.
And if disaster strikes with POS hardware during the busy build up to the Holidays, then it needn’t turn into a horror story for the retailer. Having a responsive depot repair center on hand can help to reduce the time that a store is without key equipment. If it is helping on an advance exchange basis, then they can ship a replacement item as soon as they’re notified.
This could arrive as early as the next day depending on the shipping method selected. With the faulty hardware returning to the depot, a cost-effective fixed-fee repair can be carried out, with the device retained as spare inventory for similar re-deployment.
Have you had to fend off any monsters threatening to disrupt your POS harwdare on the eve of a busy period in trading? What steps do you take so that you’re fully prepared?
