The world of retail changes constantly and small independent retailers are struggling to keep up. In 30 years we have gone from the hand written receipt and ledgers to the cash register to the POS.
Instead of checking and pricing product from an invoice, we now have to enter data for the product. Everyone who uses a POS knows that the data entry usually involves filling in 10 - 15 fields. Heaven help you if you have a web site. For me, I spend 15 - 20 minutes on entering an item when it is being posted all the way to the website.
This is really tough on an independent. Now you have choices. You can make your day longer by coming in early or staying late. Been there. Done that. No thanks. Lots of people will give you the solution. "Hire someone". This is not easy. What if there is no money. When is that individual going to do data entry? We need the computer for the POS transactions, emails, social networking and the programs that we use. Now we have to hand out keys. Then you need to hire someone who can type, is grammatically correct, honest and can work independently. If you have to check their work, you might as well have done the work yourself.
I find that too much data entry zombifies me. I find it very hard to shut down the data to give someone a courteous welcoming hello after I have been on the computer for an hour.
Here is an opportunity that I would love to be part of but I lack the computer programming skills to do so.
What if there was a list that we could subscribe to.
One that has the MSRP, the description, the weight and size, the barcode, the image (maybe customized for the most popular POS systems. Perhaps this program could go down the line. Our distributor of choice could add their reorder # and their cost. With little work we could import this information to our systems.
The resource for us in the gaming industry is the "Greater Games Industry Catalogue". This catalogue went out of style with the dodo bird. It needs to be buried. Usually I don't even open it and this is sad because someone paid to publish this. My copy goes straight to recycle.
