Become a true ecommerce jewelry brand
Understanding ecommerce today requires you have a full understanding of the entire omnichannel shopping process. In other words, you'll need to understand that you must have different methods of transacting with your customers, and those methods have to be seamless from in-store to online.
The omnichannel marketing method keeps the customer in the center of your attention by enticing them to continue their shopping journey wherever they might be.
The ultimate goal is to get them to purchase online or visit your store. You do that by showing them ads, emails, or social media posts to remind them to come back. If they don't respond, then you throw a few incentives their way until they do.
Omnichannel is perfect for retail jewelers
Since the Great Recession of 2007-2009, retail jewelers have struggled to get consumers back into their stores because technology completely changed how we all shop and respond to marketing methods.
Jewelry brands that adopted the omnichannel way of marketing are thriving while independent jewelers continue struggle with foot traffic.
The biggest hurdle for omnichannel is the need for seamless online-to-offline data. This marriage of technology is too expensive for lone retail brands.
Sadly, being stuck in a technology glut is leading to the decline of many retail brands because they cannot achieve the modern BOPIS feature needed to make the onmichannel work.
BOPIS: the next evolutionary step for jewelry brands
Retailers have tried every marketing gimmick and trend to get people back in their stores but yet continue to ignore what the consumer trends are telling everyone: customers want to see local inventory online, browse online because it's faster, make a purchase decision, then drive over to your store and spend no more than 5 minutes inside your actual store.
That is the process of "buy online, pickup in store," or BOPIS for short. Get it?
It's already been a few years since we first started seeing reports of consumer trends talking about how retail stores are now valuable assets when used correctly, and how 90% of other retail industries planned to implement BOPIS by 2021. These are solid trends that other industries are excelling at, meanwhile the retail jewelers are lagging behind.
The Omnichannel hurdle isn't your fault
While many news outlets throw around stats saying how much the jewelry industry is rising many retailers are left holding the bag while saying "WTF?! This isn't true!"
Just like little children mimic the actions of their elders, it's quite obvious that established retail brands are following the leadership of their industry elders and the service company leaders. The omnichannel method has been "a thing" for at least 10 years now, but do a Google search for "jckonline.com omnichannel" and you'll find 20 or so non sponsored editorials over the last 10 years. Most of them talk about big brands like Blue Nile, Macy's, JCPenny, Tiffany, Pandora, and James Allen. A quick read through all of them makes it seem like omnichannel is a bad idea or too expensive for retail brands to accomplish.
Can you say misleading?
Furthermore, the technology service companies that retail brands rely on are are also stuck in their own circular thinking that their marketing service, POS software, and website software is the best thing. All of our competitors are trying to convince you that their service is the best because of one blah, blah, blah method or another. It's sickening.
Granted, all of the jewelry POS providers have served the retail jewelers very well for many years. They have great software packages that are perfect for managing inventory, stock balancing, running reports, and doing more than what most people need.
After years of solid development on UNIX or Windows platforms, those POS companies simply have not taken the hurdle to move their POS to a web browser. As long as the POS is stuck running on a Windows PC it will never let you achieve true omnichannel.
Since none of the jewelry POS companies are talking about omnichannel, you are not even thinking about it. After all, your POS isn't broke, right?
Other jewelry website companies that are able to establish two-way communication with your in-store POS, but the systems are still diversified and rely on push technology that doesn't pass 100% of the information back and forth.
Meanwhile, upstarts like Shopify have created their own POS to integrate with their websites, and they have written great directions explaining how to use omnichannel for fashion and jewelry.
But Shopify doesn't have the jewelry features needed for retail store inventory, so retail brands are not really paying attention to them.
The last piece of the puzzle that's holding retailers back is the lingering notion that a website must be built with open source technology. Wordpress and Joomla are examples of open source web technologies. With open source websites the idea is that you can fire your website company and still keep your website. While that was a good notion for a few years, the truth is that no website company wants to take over the programming mess of the previous company. Divorcing your website developer invariably means you've already started a love affair with a new developer and you'll be marrying them the same day the divorce is finalized.
Enter GlitterPaw Software for Retail POS and Websites
GlitterPaw slowly evolved into a very dynamic ecommerce platform for jewelry brands. There are plenty of money-saving features for those who use the website platform to it's fullest for online marketing.
Our POS and Website Service includes the setup of your website using one of our themes.
In 2017, we started slowly expanding the online ecommerce features into a POS that could be used in a retail store, at a popup shop, or even by a designer selling product at a trade show.
We are new to the jewelry POS game, but we already have more focused omnichannel features that Shopify does. We have enough features in the software to run a retail store with typical reports, but you'll still need to use an accounting program like Quickbooks.
GlitterPaw POS + Theme Website setup: $10,000 USD
Contact us to find out about hosting, hardware, and training.
Sample Screen Shots
GlitterPaw's New Sale Screen
GlitterPaw's Repair Price Screen
GlitterPaw's Gemstone Details Screen
GlitterPaw's Diamond Cert Information Screen