The hyper-competitive beauty industry makes it extremely hard to keep up with its latest trends. Be it the new trend of CBD beauty, Clean Beauty, or Wellness Beauty. Keeping up with the changes while catering to the traditional market has become challenging.
A busy and thriving beauty store must process dozens of in-store hair & skin appointments and sell products while regularly catering to eCommerce sales and bookings. Whether you operate a local favorite store or are an owner of an upscale mega-store, the technology helps you make informed decisions for a better customer experience. A robust beauty supply pos (point-of-sale) system is thus your best bet to manage these tasks while optimizing the efficiency of your in-store employees.
To make your lives easier, we’ve crafted a complete guide that will help you scale your beauty store or salon.
What is a POS System?
A point of sale or point of purchase is where you ring up your customers. Whenever a customer checks out online and walks up to the checkout counter, they’re at the point of sale. Your POS system can be assumed as a cash register of your store.
Today, a point-of-sale system comprises hardware and software that enables you to accept payments, record sales, and check out customers entirely digitally. Your laptop, tablet, phone, or any other internet-enabled device can be used as a POS system if you download the right POS app.
Why should you go for a Beauty Supply POS System?
A pos system made for the beauty industry helps streamline operations, manage inventory, track customers, appointments, and process payments. These specialist systems can make a massive difference in the efficiency of your beauty supply store and, at the same time, increase your sales through loyalty programs and targeted marketing.
Before you choose a beauty supply pos system, consider your store’s needs first. To make your journey easier, we have crafted a checklist that your POS system must-have for an easy journey moving forward. Also you can refer to the Wise Small Business curated list of Best Beauty Supply POS Systems.
7 Must-Haves in Your Beauty Supply POS
- Focus on Bookings.
A critical part of a beauty store is bookings. Bookings help streamline tasks and ensure that the store is highly staffed and prepared for both appointments and walk-ins. As a result, you’ll require a POS system that can handle booking while working in sync with your online platform.
Know that now more than ever, customers prefer to book their hair appointments online. This is information that you need to be able to manage your stylists and their schedules. Suppose your master stylist is scheduled to leave early, and someone has booked a high-margin styling season with them; then a lack of synergy between the online booking portal and your POS system can result in a loss of revenue and a rotten Yelp review.
You can eliminate the need for synchronization between two parties entirely by opting for a POS platform that comes with an inbuilt booking functionality right out of the box.
- Designed to Sell (& Upsell) Products.
We already know that 88 percent of consumers expect to learn about products as part of their salon experience. (Source: salontoday.com) This is why you need a POS system that can handle stacking payments for services on top of products sold when the customer is undertaking their services by your master stylist.
Similarly, when your customers develop trust in your brand, they will seek you out for their new favorite products from your store. If eCommerce is enabled, your beauty supply store can benefit from the multi-billion dollar online retail industry. Yet, there’s a downside.
If your store sells online and in-store products, you might end up selling products you don’t even have without proper integration. Therefore, you need a beauty supply POS system designed to handle orders coming in from multiple channels, which can send you daily notifications on stock and keeps updating you with what you have and what you need more of.
Bonus: Your beauty supply pos should also pitch your highest-margin items to customers on the checkout screen to further drive sales through impulse buying decisions.
- It should be built on Cloud.
The traditional salons can operate with just a scissor and skill —- running even during outages. However, this is not what all POS systems are capable of.
The traditional POS systems will lose or drop data whenever there’s a power surge, cut out, or a drop in the internet connection. Hence, a cloud-based POS system will favor your salon, not against it.
A cloud-based POS system made specifically for the beauty industry can bring a sync between all your online channels. It can still run independently when connected and store payment information during outages. Once your connection returns, your system can resynchronize and thus allowing you to continue your business without dropping payments, missing appointments, or making your customers mad.
- Has Inventory Management.
Inventory management is a necessity for a POS system. This feature will help you keep pace with the ever-changing beauty trends. A robust solution with comprehensive inventory management functionality is your store’s manager.
You can keep track of the hot-selling products and the not-hot items in a single place, helping you manage the inventory intelligently. Your beauty supply POS system can also allow you to set a low stock alert, manage your relationships with vendors, and generate and receive purchase orders seamlessly.
- Secure Payments Option
Your POS system should have a PCI-DSS Compliant electronic payment gateway on which you and your customer can rely for a reduced credit card breach risk. A state-of-the-art encryption device will also encrypt cardholder information before performing an electronic payment transaction.
These devices will come with solid encryption services like Point-to-Point encryption and other industry-standard privacy management technologies to encrypt and transmit cardholder data securely over any network.
- Allows you to run loyalty programs
For a beauty supply store owner, getting a repeat customer is only possible through incentivizing your patron’s loyalty. Your store pos should be capable of helping you set up a loyalty program of your choice. Every purchase of your customer should be stored on the POS dashboard. Based on your offer, the dashboard should make redeeming your patron’s benefits easy and straightforward.
- Email Marketing Integration
A POS system with an integrated email marketing system is necessary for a paper-free customer journey. With this functionality unlocked, you can send bills, offers, coupons, loyalty program details, and other communication messages to your client without breaking a sweat.
A specialty beauty store POS can be used to keep your customer base aware of your product and/or services. An email marketing-enabled POS system is a great way to open a communication channel between your store and your customers.
Final Thoughts
If you are running a salon, beauty specialty store, or franchise, you’ll need a point-of-sale capable of handling every crucial aspect of your business like a Salonist
Remind you that just as a mismatch between our POS system and business can hold you back, the right one with built-in automation tools and other above-listed abilities can set your business up for success in years to come.
Chief Saasologist
Myself Snehil Prakash aka Chief Saasologist of Howtobuysaas. I am a saas marketer, who loves studying evolving software that is bringing change to the world. Share the same with people via howtobuysaas platform.
