A point-of-sale technology company is shifting gears with the launch of an e-commerce platform that helps retailers integrate online and in-store inventory.
Lightspeed POS Inc. today introduced its e-commerce software for small to medium-sized independent retailers. The technology is designed to quickly integrate with the vendor’s point-of-sale technology used by 33,000 retailer clients on store associates’ iPads, but any retailer can use the platform, says JP Chauvet, Lightspeed’s chief revenue officer.
Bricks-and-mortar retailers using Lightspeed include the Kardashian sisters’ clothing boutique, Dash; Leica camera stores in North America; and Bang & Olufsen audio and home-automation system stores in North America. Lightspeed cannot yet say how many of its existing customers will use its e-commerce platform, Chauvet says.
A web-only Canadian retailer that lets shoppers design their own T-shirts has upgraded its e-commerce site using Lightspeed’s new e-commerce platform.
Poches & Fils says it replaced its previous e-commerce platform with the Lightspeed system because it is more cost-efficient, lets shoppers choose quickly among the retailer’s 4,000 products and automatically syncs up with a shopper’s choice of language (English or French) and currency (U.S. dollar or the Canadian dollar with plans to add the euro), says Nicolas Dubeau, the retailer’s co-founder.
“Every item is unique, so the shopper builds his own custom T-shirt, including the shape of the lapel square, the size, the color, the design, and we want the customer to compare the different T-shirts with the different pockets,” he says. The old website wouldn’t allow product comparisons or the language options and currency conversions. It also required the chief technology officer to write custom code to track inventory, Dubeau says.
Last year, Poches & Fils had $400,000 in online revenue selling to customers in Quebec, Dubeau says. About 80% of those customers are French Canadians. The retailer aims to expand this year throughout North America and Europe, including France, England, Belgium and the Netherlands, Dubeau says.
The T-shirt company projects it will save at least $10,000 in annual transaction fees, Dubeau says. Lightspeed charges a tiered monthly fee that starts at $79 a month and tops out at $171, depending on the retailer’s size and choice of services. The previous vendor charged $179 a month, he says.
Retailers can set up the system to get alerts when certain items are running low so they can order more. Lightspeed users also can connect purchasing history with marketing programs so that, for example, a retailer sending a marketing email about a sale on men’s ties can email only those shoppers who have purchased men’s shirts.
For retailers whose store POS systems already use Lightspeed, their e-commerce platforms’ administration panel, accessible through a browser, lets them click “yes” inside a menu of options to start selling online. The retailer chooses a URL on which it wants to sell and Lightspeed can populate the site with in-store inventory, though the retailer can choose how much of its store inventory to sell online. The software reduces available inventory with each purchase, regardless of whether the shopper buys in-store or online.
“Our retail customers told us they wanted a tight integration between online and offline,” Chauvet says.
The Montreal-based Lightspeed, which declines to provide its revenue, employs 500 worldwide, grew revenues 123% year over year in 2015, and is hiring 30 new employees each month, he says.