You’ve just spent countless weeks and nights setting up your new point of sale (POS) system — counting inventory, exporting spreadsheets, and purchasing new equipment to be ready to open for business.
Now, you want to cut down remnant bolts of fabric into fat quarters and assemble kits for your next class. You have your scissors, rolling cutter, and staff ready to go. You just need to figure out how you're going to account for all of it in your POS.
Can your POS system handle it?
Do you know how to adjust your inventory?
Do you know where to go to learn how?
Retail quilt and fabric stores have distinctive needs and you need a unique POS to handle your complex business. In this blog, we explore the features required for quilt and fabric stores — and how they help you manage your inventory and set your fabric store up for success.
Fabric Store POS System Benefits
You decided to go with the same system the store next door recommended, but they aren’t running a fabric store. A generic, broad market POS doesn't fit your needs.
You need features tailored to fabric stores — but what exactly does that mean?
When searching for a point of sale system for your quilting and fabric store, look for a system with built-in industry-specific features — this will save you time, effort, and money while managing your business.
Important POS Features for Fabric Stores
You need a fabric store POS for your quilt and fabric store, but what are the features that make your life easier? Let’s see what makes a difference.
Kit Builder
One of the best ways to engage customers and build a lasting relationship is to create an ongoing kit business. More than square of the month clubs, seasonal kits, and other special occasions, you can build recurring revenue and stability in your business with a kit marketing strategy for your store. Modern POS systems allow you to assemble and disassemble kits and adjust your inventory automatically.
Class Management
One of the core marketing strategies for quilt and fabric stores is regular classes. These classes introduce new customers to your business and experienced quilters and sewers to new products or techniques. An inclusive POS eases scheduling and managing the registration and communication process.
Precuts and Fractional Yards
Unique to the fabric business is the regular practice of converting your source product to new precut products. A fabric store POS allows you to easily create fractional cuts, fat quarters, fat eighths, or custom precuts from your bolts of fabric.
Vendor Product Integrations
While product catalog integrations have become standard in many POS systems, large general-use providers don’t focus on the specific needs of fabric stores. The best systems enable you to quickly integrate product fabric store suppliers and enable access to product data including product images, descriptions, and pricing.
Related Read: Leveraging Preloaded Vendor Catalogs for Seamless Point of Sale Product Listing
Customer Marketing
Many quilt and fabric stores are the hub of a close community, but communicating with your shop’s audience can take up a huge part of your time. Your POS should empower you to segment your audience and automate reaching out to them by email, text, and other channels for each of the marketing opportunities you create.
Service and Repairs
A fabric store POS allows you to create and manage the labor-based services your shop provides. Your system should also enable you to charge for serialized parts, and facilitate communication and the workflow of each project.
Beyond these fabric store POS features, your POS must also handle all the features you expect like inventory management, online sales sync, and reporting. You need a system that will fulfill all your needs.
Top 4 Fabric Shop POS Providers
There are hundreds of POS providers, but here are some of the best POS systems for your fabric store’s specific needs.
Rain POS
Made for: Specialty retailers
Rain focuses on unique retail businesses. It’s tailor made for independent craft stores, boutiques, consignment, and outdoor retailers. It strives to simplify the challenges of running a specialty retail business.
With Rain POS, you can:
- Track related parts and serialized products in inventory.
- Send text message service reminders from the POS.
- Manage class registration and communication.
Rain POS caters to the unique needs of specialty retailers.
Pricing: Receive a custom quote with a demo.
POSIM
Made for: Needle arts and crafts
POSIM is an on-premise POS system for small to mid-sized retailers including general retail, clothing, shoes, accessories, quilt and fabric, needle art, craft and hobby, toy, and outdoor stores. If you are a retail business that wants more than just a simple POS system, POSIM may be right for you.
With POSIM, you can:
- Create layaway orders and make incremental payments until final purchase.
- Design promotions and email marketing campaigns to keep in touch with shoppers.
- Integrate your POS with Shopify and select from various customizable templates.
POSIM customizes every client’s experience with its software.
Pricing: POSIM offers three plans requiring a custom quote.
Square
Made for: General retail
Square is used by many small businesses around the world. There are thousands of features and options to choose from when setting up your POS system. It can be configured to serve most businesses, from retailers to bakeries and delis to hairdressers.
With Square, you can:
- Accepts almost all forms of payment.
- Quickly check out customers at the counter or on mobile devices.
- Adapt to the particular needs of your retail business.
Square offers Flexible POS solutions for every business type.
Pricing: Square provides a no-cost POS system with a 2.9% processing fee, plus an additional 30 cent processing charge per transaction. Custom plans require a quote.
Like Sew
Made for: Fabric stores
Like Sew is specifically built for quilt and fabric stores. It’s focused on creating features tailor-made for the quilting and sewing industry. Like Sew fabric store POS works with quilt and fabric vendors to integrate fabric store services and data.
With Like Sew, you can:
- Integrate vendor product catalogs quickly and easily.
- Sell fractional yards and synchronize inventory online and in-store.
- Communicate with customers with complete integrated marketing tools.
Like Sew is an easy-to-use quilt and fabric store POS.
Pricing: Get a custom quote for your fabric store.
Get Started With the Best Fabric Store Point of Sale
If you own and operate a fabric store, you need a POS that’s made for your specific business needs. And there are so many challenges when you start a new business or make a significant change to your systems or processes — there’s no need for added risk.
When you choose a fabric store POS system such as Like Sew, you’re better positioned for success.
Like Sew offers a powerful retail software solution to help fabric and quilting businesses use preloaded vendor catalogs and improve their bottom line. If you want to take your inventory management to the next level, consider implementing the catalogs feature and using Like Sew to help streamline your processes.
Want to learn more about Like Sew? Schedule a demo.