Thrift stores, like other retailers, are no longer confined to brick-and-mortar operations. Consumers have gone all in with shopping online as 93% of Americans shop online for secondhand items. However, digital transformation is much more than simply setting up a website and selling things online. Every aspect of operations needs to be retooled. As a thrift store operator, you will need to reshape how you operate, manage inventory, and connect with customers.
Embracing eCommerce for Wider Reach
You need to reach more potential customers to increase sales and further your mission. That is exactly what embracing eCommerce platforms can do for you. Growing your thrift offering online will exponentially increase your audience.
By fully embracing eCommerce, thrift stores can expand into several new realms of business operations. Ways you can grow:
- Reaching a broader customer base beyond your local physical community is the first and most obvious benefit, but there are more.
- Not all of your potential customers are free to shop during your store hours. With eCommerce your customers can shop when convenient for them, not you.
- Online platforms allow you to provide detailed descriptions and high-quality photos of items to attract and inform buyers. Detail-oriented shoppers will appreciate having more data points to help them make purchasing decisions while shopping in your online store.
Going online is more than simply creating a website and selling merchandise. To keep eCommerce running smoothly, your online sales must connect directly to the main POS solution to ensure consistency and maintain real-time inventory.
Automating Inventory Management
Managing inventory is a constant challenge for thrift stores due to their ever-changing stock. Receiving inventory through donations makes inputting items into a system more difficult than in traditional retail stores. Thrift store specific POS systems are designed to automate inventory management and can offer your operation numerous advantages:
- Production can be a tedious and time-consuming task for thrift stores. It can take a lot of training to make judgments on incoming items. However, the right system can enable you to simplify the categorization and tagging of items, reducing the time it takes and simplifying the job so that even new employees can execute it flawlessly.
- Customers remember bad experiences far longer than good ones. Making an online purchase for an item no longer in stock would be remembered as a bad experience. Tracking stocking levels in real-time not only protects your bottom line and dramatically improves profitability, but it also ensures customers don’t get stuck in a bad situation.
- Digitizing production has the added benefit of integration with eCommerce platforms to automatically update online listings. This eliminates the possibility of human error in forgetting to add new items to the online store.
Implementing Mobile POS Solutions
Mobile point-of-sale (POS) systems are transforming how thrift stores handle transactions and interact with customers. These systems are enabling operators to rethink virtually every aspect of how they interact with customers:
- You can streamline the checkout process by going to your customers rather than making them come to you. With these systems, long lines at the cashier will be a thing of the past and customers will appreciate the speed and convenience of mobile checkout.
- Break out of the walls of your location and support pop-up events and fundraisers anywhere in your community. These events not only raise money but also increase awareness of your store and your cause.
- Of course these options are not necessarily a convenience if they don’t integrate automatically with inventory and sales data so there is no need to maintain independent, siloed systems.
Driving Future Growth with Digital Tools
Digital transformation is not just a flashy trend that is here today but will be gone tomorrow. This is a fundamental shift in how you operate your thrift store. You will be able to reach more customers at any time in any location. Digitizing is a necessity for thrift stores looking to thrive in an increasingly digital world.
