Two years ago (October 2011) I submitted this idea to the first Shopify Fund (<a href="http://www.shopify.com/fund" rel="nofollow">http://www.shopify.com/fund</a>):<p>"The second idea is to create a POS system that integrates fully into Shopify. Thus one can use Shopify to manage sales for all the store's inventory both those that one sells through the web and also those that one sells from the physical store. The POS front end for Shopify will allow for Shopify to expand into those with both an online presence and those who also have a storefront. This is perfect for small businesses. I believe it could be very disruptive to the POS market because it would be very easy to adopt for customers."<p>Back when I applied to the Shopify Fund there were little requirements it just asked for ideas: <a href="http://web.archive.org/web/20111018133854/http://www.shopify.com/fund" rel="nofollow">http://web.archive.org/web/20111018133854/http://www.shopify...</a><p>I never heard back from them.
I have repeatedly had clients on a budget choose Magento over Shopify due to a lack of fine grain control.<p>It's very frustrating that they can release a POS system, however fail at, for example, complex sales reports.<p>I wish they'd get it together because they would blow everyone out the water.
I realize that POS is a term that is widely used as a TLA for point of sale, but it feels like Shopify POS is an unfortunate name given that it's also a TLA for piece of sh*t.
I've sung the praises of Shopify on multiple occasions, here and in real life and to various clients. Their products and services just continue to get better and better, across the board.<p>Excellent work, Shopify!
Suggestion for the Shopify folk-<p>The site doesn't say that the POS supports a barcode scanner, but the video says that it does (and shows it in use). As a retailer, not having a barcode scanner would be a prompt deal breaker[0]. It should be featured somewhere on the microsite.<p>[0] lack of a barcode scanner isn't bad if you have 16 products. Once you're managing any serious level of inventory, especially with unique size/color combinations, there's so much risk for error if each item isn't being scanned. Then there's speed of service to the customer; it's just quicker.
Shopify constantly seem to be pushing new ground, although I find it hard to imagine a store on that platform turning over $1,000,000+ just seems to limited unlike Magento.
Am I missing something here? This is a parody that is to subtle for my sleepy mind right now?<p>Am I the only one that immediately reads it as Shopify Piece Of Shit?
Am I missing something or is there no barcode scanner? It seems like a no-brainer to me. You wouldn't even need additional hardware, just use the camera as a scanner.
The iPad POS market is saturated, and Square already has a tremendous foothold. I have serious doubts about the whether this system can succeed so late in the game.<p>Moreover, I can't really be brought to care about these types of POS systems, primarily because they're all categorically atrocious. Many of my favorite coffee shops have been replacing their registers with iPads, and the universal result has been longer lines and more errors in recording orders. These things have consistently caused a regression of the customer experience in businesses. They're slow, they're unwieldy, and for whatever reason people demonstrate considerable ineptitude at using them. In my opinion, there is absolutely nothing wrong with the cash register. Things like Square should be used only in instances where using a traditional register would be untenable. The fact that companies are needlessly adopting these things and subsequently worsening the experience for their customers is tremendously disappointing.<p>The iPad will never be better at taking people's credit cards than a traditional register. It wasn't designed to, and companies should stop pretending otherwise.
This seemed very familiar to me. I remembered seeing Square offering a POS kit[0] just this spring. Interestingly though, they no longer sell it and instead are only offering a (very slick) stand/reader[1].<p>I wonder why they stopped offering the whole kit. My only guess it was a MVP style trial balloon offering to gauge interest before building their own hardware. Or, it didn't fly, which may not bode well for Shopify either.<p>[0] <a href="http://appleinsider.com/articles/13/02/20/square-launches-ipad-driven-business-in-a-box-hardware-for-299" rel="nofollow">http://appleinsider.com/articles/13/02/20/square-launches-ip...</a><p>[1] <a href="https://squareup.com/register/hardware" rel="nofollow">https://squareup.com/register/hardware</a>
It's surprising to see no Interac support, since Shopify are from Canada. I don't see any store here using this unless it supports Interac debit cards. I use a Square card reader with my iPhone at a merch booth at concerts, which doesn't need the full POS components, but more storefronts here support Interac than credit cards and you would be turning away a lot of business in a storefront context by not supporting it.
As the director a development agency, we cannot use Shopify for our clients until they create the ability for products to have custom fields. Some products need to present more information than is standard, such as a wine store that needs to display vintage, alcohol. volume etc. Til then this excellent new technology is useless to us.
In the POS 2.0 space (referring to new, tablet/cloud services), how many players will survive 5 years down the road?<p>Is this a "winner take all" or "winner + 2nd place take all" space?<p>I feel bad for the local cafe that hitches their wagon to an eventual loser–especially if their data is locked in.
The page seems to crash the tab after 40 seconds in Chrome Canary Version 31.0.1602.0 canary - also there's a js error after closing the signup popup.
This looks like the sort of product that makes me wonder why no one thought of this before. Or has any other online e-commerce platform did something like this before?