9 Things to Consider Before Buying POS System for Clothing Store

Point of sale (POS) software plays an important role in your business growth. It is a pivot around which all your sales operations revolve. You can keep an eye on sales, measure performance, and offer a seamless experience to your customers with it. We have discussed a few key details that you need to consider before investing in a POS system for a clothing store.

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What is a clothing store POS system?

A clothing store POS system is like any other point of sale system. It helps you complete in-store and online customer transactions timely while keeping track of your inventory.

The clothing store POS software improves both the productivity and efficiency of the store. Not only it reduces inventory errors and cash mistakes but also provides a frictionless shopping experience to customers. A POS system for retail clothing stores ensures superfast checkouts during peak hours and sales season.

Clothing store managers can easily scan and process items based on their barcodes. This saves time by making the buying process fast during billing.

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Why do you need a POS system for clothing stores?

POS systems for retail clothing stores are effective for managing clothing inventory of different SKUs and variants. You can assort items according to brands or categories and thus get full control over stocks. Having great visibility over the inventory means you can monitor and manage reorder points (ROP) and economic order quantities (EOQ) based on customers' needs and demands.

You can gather data on sales, inventory, and customers with good clothing store POS software. This information comes in handy to calculate and run marketing campaigns. You can run day-to-day store operations while maintaining your bottom line. A clothing store POS system that calculates profit and loss and keeps track of uninterrupted sales can help you optimize operations.

You need a POS system for a clothing store because it:

• Provides easy checkouts 
• Tracks clothing items based on their sizes, colors, brands, etc.
• Makes billing easy by avoiding calculation difficulties
• Offers inventory insights to make your sales promotion profitable
• Collects customer information to engage with them through marketing campaigns
• Predicts the demands and ensures optimum stocks are available

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Things to Consider Before Buying POS System for Clothing Store

Before you buy a POS system, make sure it meets your retail needs. Below are some key features that the best POS system for retail clothing stores must offer to its users.

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1. Inventory Handling

Inventory is the heart of any retail business, especially for a clothing store. An ideal POS system is one which can keep up with your inventory needs. Make sure it can manage serialized items and is integratable with your inventory management system.

A good POS software will allow you to organize and manage products by adding custom tags. This way you’ll be able to organize items according to their sizes and colors.

To summarize, you need a POS system for clothing store which can:

• Grouped products together thematically
• Create customizable tags
• Handle serialized stock
• Store customer and vendor information
• Identify reorder points 
• Display purchasing metrics and BI reporting

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2. Syncs Your Online and Offline Retail Store

When it comes to generating revenue, retailers market products both in-store and online get more sales. However, the key here is to keep a balance between these two in order to be more profitable.

An omnichannel inventory management system can help you manage the stock on both channels. But you also need a POS system which synchronizes sales between your physical store and online eCommerce website. So, instead of getting two disconnected systems, investing in a single omnichannel clothing POS is a better option. Only the best Clothing store POS can help you extend brand consistency between different sales channels.

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3. Offers a Personalized Experience

Today’s customers are more conscious and becoming increasingly mindful of their purchases. Market research has shown that 81% of people research online before visiting a store to buy their desired products.

This means most customers do product comparisons online and only then enter to shop. These are quality leads you can get by offering a personalized experience. This is where a good clothing POS can help you provide a seamless customer experience. It can assist managers to browse inventory and search whether the desired items are in stock.

Make sure your POS software can make product recommendations and save customers’ purchase histories. This will enable your staff to offer tailored recommendations to returning customers. A built-in loyalty tool or integration feature is a must-have feature which can help you offer discounts to loyal customers.

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4. Modern ML-Based Recommendation Engine

Product recommendations not only increase the order value but also improves the user experience. Do you know 91% of customers make a purchase based on product recommendations?

This huge number signifies the importance of a product recommendation engine. People like brands who recommend them products based on their shopping behavior and previous purchasing instead of offering a long coat while you are there to by a T-shirt. The best clothing store POS can do that for you using modern technologies like machine learning (ML).

There are three types of product recommendations

1. Global
2. Contextual
3. Personalized

So make sure the clothing store POS software you are buying has the recommendation feature. It’ll help you recommend products to customers in-store and online for upselling. You can also use this feature to identify suitable products for a target audience to run marketing campaigns.

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5. Empowers Your Staff

Your employees are the ambassadors of your clothing brand. So, make sure they can provide relevant information and recommend products to customers quickly. With a good POS system, your staff can quickly serve people visiting your store. This will help them find products of desired colors or sizes without wasting time.

Your employees will be able to find items quickly since the stock is properly categorized. They can confirm product availability by entering SKU and checking the inventory status as well.

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6. Integratable with Existing Technology Stack

POS integration is the key to scaling a retail business. With integration, you can connect your point of sale with other important tools and software. You can import or export data to monitor stock levels, push sales, handle payments, manage accounts, and run marketing campaigns. In a nutshell, integrations are what provide the true Omnichannel commerce experience.

So, if you are planning to buy a POS system, make sure it is integratable with your existing technology stack. It should be able to synchronize all sales channels (offline and online) and integrate with the inventory and order management system.

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7. Integrated with Payments

Like omnichannel commerce, omnichannel payment enables a business to integrate multiple payment options. When you provide customers with more than one payment method, you can save time. More importantly, this can help you improve customer experience and reduce the checkout abandonment rate. The possibility of human errors also reduces with an integrated payment method.

So, make sure your POS is integrated with multiple payment methods. In case you want to avoid bouncing between software, buy POS and Omnichannel payment systems from the same company.

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8. Enables You to Run Targeted Marketing Campaigns

Marketing to the right targeted audience is a tricky thing for many retailers. It requires consistent efforts not to mention the time and resources that you have to put into it. You can generate consistent sales by targeting the existing customer base with clothing POS software.

Returning customers are far more valuable as their chances of buying items are twofold. So, instead of marketing blindly or sending cold emails, it’s wise to retarget people who have already bought from you. This is where you can take advantage of the information collected by your POS. What’s more fascinating is that you can segment your customers into categories and evaluate their needs.

You can integrate email marketing software with POS to send promotional offers. Also, this information will help you run informed and targeted marketing campaigns. You can market similar products because you already know their previous purchase history. 

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9. Reporting & Analytics

Understanding data is crucial in this day and age to compete in the retail industry. You need a clothing store POS which can collect information, analyze customer behaviors, and provide insightful reports. It can show you a clear picture of your business and how well you are doing.

A good POS software can make reports to show your top-selling and most profitable products. You can identify top-performance stores, compare in-store sales with online sales, and the busiest store hours. All this information and analysis can strengthen your decision-making process. You will be able to make more informed decisions based on a clothing store POS system that does profit loss.