Surging Spring Sales for ShopKeep POS Stores

The latest numbers are in and stores using ShopKeep POS are continuing to see strong growth year over year. Same store sales for ShopKeep POS merchants in April 2013 were up 14.5% over April 2012. This growth dwarfs same store growth of just 2.2% for general retailers across the U.S.

April’s results for ShopKeep POS merchants are a continuation of the success we’ve seen throughout 2013 (see January, February, March) and the increase was seen across verticals. Quick service restaurants jumped 14% and bakeries were up a huge 19%!

As we’ve shared here previously, ShopKeep POS is taking part in the Small Business Breakthrough movement throughout the month of May because we are committed to making more meaningful connections within the small business community. With that in mind, we decided to reach out to one merchant in particular whose growth really stood out. EscoGelato‘s sales nearly doubled over the past year and we spoke to the owner, Suzanne, to get a sense of how she achieved this incredible growth.

“The simplicity of the iPad point of sale is the real win for me,” she said. “After working with traditional POS systems in the past, I really found using ShopKeep POS to be a revelation. I literally don’t have to train my staff at all; the system is intuitive enough that they just get it, which I love. With ice cream, when you’re busy, you’re really busy – so on Friday nights I can have lines that stretch halfway down the street. I need a POS system that makes processing payments super quick. ShopKeep POS provides exactly that.”

Having worked in marketing previously, Suzanne found that her challenge wasn’t so much spreading the word as spreading the word about the right things, “I’m lucky to have an amazing community of friends and family around me that loved what I was doing and that really got the word out quickly. We get great reviews on Yelp, which helps a lot too. Pretty quickly the main challenge for the store became driving sales on items that were providing the best margins.”

EscoGelato sells a range of products, including ice cream, Italian sandwiches, and coffee and Suzanne used ShopKeep POS to help her make intelligent decisions about which products are really making a difference to her bottom line. “By studying sales reports I was able to discover that I was selling too many low-margin sandwiches, and shifted more of the store’s focus over to higher-margin ice cream. In the future, I’m really looking forward to seeing the new tools ShopKeep POS will be coming out with and digging deeper into my data.  One day, I’d like to trade up to a bigger place and I want to make that decision based on solid data. ShopKeep POS is really helping me feel confident when making those plans.”

If you’re interested in looking at these numbers yourself, and seeing the same kind of success as Suzanne, you can easily analyze your year-over-year sales by logging into your BackOffice and going to the reporting tab. There, you can find a variety of charts and exports that you can run by date, allowing you to understand your own business better. Be sure to check it out and feel free to let us know how your business is doing!