VendBlog

Vender of the week: Agatha Paris

Fri, 17 Feb 2012 16:05:00 +1300

Every week we post a quick profile of one of our many interesting point-of-sale customers worldwide.

What: AGATHA Paris is the iconic French jewellery brand that fuses the fashionable with the affordable. Established in France in 1974, there are over 320 boutique worldwide. The first Australasian boutique opened November 2009 on High Street, Auckland.

Love your customer: An iconic global fashion brand, now in New Zealand. Designer French jewellery, at affordable prices. And a cute Scottie Dog as the brand logo.

What’s not to love?

Love your POS: ”The cloud, the design, the simplicity, the updates, the access from the boutique, office and home, the API. We LOVE Vend! ” - Agatha Paris, Auckland, New Zealand.

Silent printing for Vend on Google Chrome

Fri, 17 Feb 2012 09:35:00 +1300

One of the most popular requests on our helpdesk is the ability to print receipts during a sale without having click, or press enter on, the print dialog that appears when a web browser prints every page. Commonly known as “silent printing”.

Very ninja.

We’re pleased to let Vend customers know that there are now not one, but two methods to enable silent printing for Vend point of sale. Both of which are compatible with our favorite browser, Google Chrome. (Although, for now, only on Windows.)

eAngulus Silent Print for VendHQ

One of our partners in Australia, Shaun Williams of eAngulus Computer Solutions, has built a lite, Windows app, that automatically fires the ‘print’ button when the print dialog appears.

The app installs in seconds, only ‘triggers’ at the Vend sell screen, and requires no other configuration changes. Nice & easy.

Find out more and purchase Silent Print for VendHQ from the eAngulus website.

Kiosk Printing for Google Chrome

Chrome has a startup shortcut which enables the browser to run in full screen only, or kiosk, mode. Since Chrome version 18.0.1 (currently on the beta channel) a clever addition to kiosk mode has been released, kiosk printing.

This works with the Chrome native ‘print preview’ feature, automatically firing the print button as soon as print preview appears.

Full configuration instructions both both options are detailed on our knowledgebase, and below is a video tutorial for enabling kiosk printing in Google Chrome.

Happy Vending!

^Nick

Vender of the week: Man O' War Tasting Room

Fri, 10 Feb 2012 12:32:00 +1300

Every week we post a quick profile of one of our many interesting point-of-sale customers worldwide.

Who: Man O’ War Tasting Room

Where: Man O’ War Vineyards, Waiheke Island, New Zealand

What: Waiheke Island produces some of the best red wines in the world. Man O War vineyards is one of the oldest and largest wine producers on the island. In 2011, they opened a beach front tasting room for wine, platters and events.

Love your customer: We popped in to say hello to the team at Man O War Tasting Room in January 2012.

A quick hop by boat from downtown Auckland, or a 30 minute, dusty drive through the vines, either way it is absolutely worth the journey. Nestled among the Pohutukawa trees, set back from the remote Man O War bay, it is an idyllic setting in which to while away a sunny summer afternoon over a bottle or two of their world class Chardonnay or Syrah.

It’s a tough gig, we know…

Love your POS: ”Vend has worked extremely well for all, especially composite products. Staff find the system so user friendly, and management can keep an eye on progress remotely! Email support from Vend is tops, always answered within 24 hours if not 12 hours. Would recommend A+!” - Denise, Man O’ War Tasting Room, Waiheke Island.

Vend: 2011 Xero Add-On Partner of the Year #xerocon

Wed, 08 Feb 2012 11:29:29 +1300

Last week, the Vend team had the please of attending Xerocon 2012 in Auckland, New Zealand. We enjoyed talking with many of the Xero partners throughout the conference and learning about what is to come in the year ahead.

Ending the conference with a fantastic Gala and Awards Dinner, the Vend team was honored with the “Add-On Partner of the Year” for 2011. Faced with strong competition, we congratulate the other nominees in our category: Unleashed and SmartPayroll. This award would not be possible without our many partners and customers. We appreciate all of the support, following and well wishes throughout the evening on twitter. Thank you for all that you do to help bring solid, financial records to customers globally.

^Kara

Image courtesy of Xero. View more photos from #xerocon on the Xero Facebook page

Vender of the week: An Eye 4 Art

Fri, 03 Feb 2012 15:19:23 +1300

Every week we post a quick profile of one of our many interesting customers worldwide.

Who: An Eye 4 Art

Where: Auckland, New Zealand

What: An Eye 4 Art Gallery specializes in unique NZ Artworks and Gifts. It is a place where artists can exhibit their work and customers can find something original and unique for their home and office.

Love your customer: Business woman and artist Leah Poto, started An Eye 4 Art as a home business for her and her mothers unqiue glass, jewellery and canvas works. It quickly grew into a fully fledged business, now established in busy Three Kings. We love Leah’s passion for reputation for introducing artists of all backgrounds to the market and giving them exposure which is often hard to achieve on their own, and for celebrating Kiwi creativity and identity.

Love your POS: ”Traditional software suppliers could not provide us with an easy and affordable way to access our P.O.S. remotely.. and we like the easy payment plan, personal contact with the developers and the future scope of the new technology which will grow and develop as the business does.”

Vender of the week: Caribou Baby

Fri, 27 Jan 2012 11:01:00 +1300

Every week we post a quick profile of one of our many interesting customers worldwide.

Who: Caribou Baby

Where: Greenpoint, Brooklyn, NY, USA

What: Caribou Baby offers products and classes for pregnancy, birth preparation and parenting, as well as baby supplies and toys, carefully selected to encourage simple and healthy living.

Love your customer: We love babies, and we love Brooklyn, NYC! Caribou Baby, which is owned by husband & wife Greg and Adriane Stare, has a goal of supporting young, city dwelling folk through the challenges of early parenting, in a welcoming environment, with a focus on intuitive parenting and sustainability. Something which resonates dearly with many of us here at Vend. And Greg is an active member to our community and product feedback forums, which we always welcome.

Love your POS: ”We’ve really been thrilled with Vend and are happy to contribute to it’s development. We moved over from our old POS and have never looked back.” - Greg Stare, Caribou Baby

Love your customers: with Peoplemine for Vend

Thu, 26 Jan 2012 10:43:00 +1300

PeopleMine, an exciting new Vend integration partner, offers “customer analytics software for smart businesses.”

This is very clever stuff. A bit like Google Analytics, but for people, instead of websites. And best of all, you don’t need a PHD in marketing or statistics to understand your data and engage with your customers.

Through a seamless integration with the Vend API, PeopleMine takes all the customer and sales data from your point of sale transactions, and produces smart reports in a user-friendly, intuitive format.

Clever visualisations, and powerful analysis makes understanding your customers simple. You can easily track at-risk customers, or see which groups are performing well, for targeted marketing. Full RFM (Recency, Frequency, Money) analysis, and email campaign tracking.

By integrating Vend point of sale with PeopleMine, your bricks and mortar business will have the sort of retail & customer analytics normally only available to big players like Walmart and Target, at a fraction of the cost.

Sign up for a free trial at www.peoplemine.co.nz, link your Vend account (on the account page) and find out for yourself.

Read and download a factsheet on PeopleMine
Read and downloa a factsheet on PeopleMine + Vend

Getting social with friends of Vend

Thu, 26 Jan 2012 09:34:41 +1300

At Vend, we love to hear how our retailers are able to create a gathering place for not only their data, but also their customers.

Last night, Vend welcomed several of our customers, partners and friends to our San Francisco office to further explore how we use social media to connect with our existing and future customers.

In a room full of experience and industry insights, we explored some of the questions and processes related to social media. You can find the full discussion on twitter under the hashtag #VendSocial.

Catherine Walker, Community Manager at Xero, fielded one of the primary questions we all ask: With so many choices, how do you determine which platform to use? Walker explained the need to be where your customers are; the end user drives your presence and choice.

Raising the question of balancing audience needs, Aish Fenton, co-founder of vWork App, shared with us his experience of listening to what information existing customers seek, what attracts new customers and how to maintain a personal side to your message.

Our friends at Taylor Stitch shared how they use multiple platforms to announce new releases of their shirts, monitor customer satisfaction, and gave many of us a first look at Instagram as a method of sharing photos.

Joining us from Shift Communications, Jennifer Usher and Jenna Broughton, discussed with us the importance of employees embracing the social media platforms used by the company and engaging in conversations with customers.

Feeling a bit overwhelmed? Can’t seem to follow the conversation? We met talkwheel, and saw how it can bring online interaction and engagement full circle.

Ending our evening with a forward looking question, was Jamie Sutherland, President, US Operations for Xero. He asked, “What is the next ‘twitter’ or the next big social media platform?” We ask you the same. What do you think? How will we engage with our customers 5 years from now?

Kara

Vender of the week: Quilted Thimble Cottage

Fri, 20 Jan 2012 11:57:00 +1300

Every week we post a quick profile of one of our many interesting customers worldwide.

Who: Quilted Thimble Cottage

Where: Belmont, North Carolina, USA

What: A family-owned and operated quilt shop, Quilted Thimble Cottage have been using Vend point of sale in their bricks and mortar shop since 2011, integrated into their Shopify online store.

Why Vend: An important part of running/owning a quilt shop is to setup in various regional quilt shows as a stall vendor. In the early days Quilted Thimble Cottage relied on carbon-paper receipt books that were then reconciled back in the brick and mortar on Monday mornings. With Vend, they can take their point of sale on the road, and cut out all that unnecessary paperwork!

“A wonderful combination of integration, inventory management, and portability. The best part is the customer support that Vend offers!” - David Thurston, Quilted Thimble Cottage

Meet the team: Keri Henare

Wed, 18 Jan 2012 13:50:00 +1300

Every month we profile a member of the Vend team. This month it’s Keri Henare, who joined Vend in October of 2011, and has well established himself as our cheekiest uber-geek and tech fanboy extraordinaire.

Many of you will know Keri well already, from his highly respected work (and ferocious tweeting). But for those of you who don’t, here he is, in 6 questions or less..

Who are you?

I’m Keri Henare - Web developer extraordinaire

What are you doing here?

I’m part of Vend’s senior development team. We craft every feature that goes into Vend and are constantly refining the application for a better experience. In particular, my focus is on the sale screen, which is the most used component of Vend. I’ll be putting a lot of effort into perfecting the flow of transactions and making everything easier for our users.

Where did you work before ‘turning green’?

Before joining Vend I was co-owner at Pixel Fusion (http://pixelfusion.co.nz), an amazing web development team. I was sad to leave Pixel Fusion, but Vend was an opportunity that couldn’t be turned down.

Why Vend?

Like many others, I’ve done my time working in retail on terrible archaic point of sale systems. I love the opportunity to be part of what Vend is doing: Showing the big boys how well POS can be done and turning an entire industry on its head in the process. Vend has a big future ahead and I’m excited for the journey.

Tell us something curious about yourself.

[ REDACTED FOR PUBLIC SAFETY ]

If Vend was a Sci Fi hero, who would it be?

Neo from The Matrix. He exists to bring freedom to the enslaved, making a world of computers better for humans. He has both online and offline support, and (like us) he’s a fan of the colour green.

Keri
http://kerihenare.com
@KeriHenare

Vend support moving to Zendesk

Thu, 05 Jan 2012 13:19:20 +1300

We wish to advise our customers that we will shortly be moving all our online support services, currently hosted at http://help.vendhq.com, to Zendesk, the leading hosted support platform. The new support centre will be hosted at

http://support.vendhq.com

Our change of support platform times with the release of a major product update to Vend, so we can begin 2012 not only with a shiny new point-of-sale app, but with an awesome new helpdesk too!

Zendesk comes packed with a host of cool features and integrations to enable us to provide our customers with the highest level of product support and community engagement possible.

“What do I need to do?”

Nothing :)

Our existing product knowledgebase will be available on the new platform, and the current helpdesk will remain live (in a reduced capacity) for a couple of months after switchover. Any outstanding help tickets and customer history on the current platform will still be available and attended to, but after switchover, any new support enquiries, tickets, emails and public forum posts will automatically be directed to Zendesk.

New year, new Vend

Thu, 05 Jan 2012 08:05:00 +1300

We are very pleased to present our customers a sneak preview of a major product update we will be releasing early next week. The culmination of many months’ hard work by our dev team, as well as feedback and testing from our customers.

Below is a round up of the top features about which we’re most excited.

Please note we anticipate approximately 2 hours service outage during the upgrade, on Sunday 8th January at 01:00 Pacific Time (GMT-7) / 09:00 GMT / 22:00 NZ Time (GMT+13). The Vend sell screen will still function in ‘offline’ mode during this outage.

Composite Products

With composite products you will be able to build virtual ‘menu’ items out of whole, multiple or split products. Selling or order a composite product reduces or increases inventory from the products which make up its parts.

We’ve designed composite products to be as flexible as possible, to work with the widest range of inventory. Some examples could include

Case of Wine (composed of 12 unit bottles)
Glass of Wine (composed of 0.2 unit bottles)
Hamburger (composed of 1 burger, 1 bun, 0.2 tomato, 0.1 cheese)
Bicycle Set (composed of 1 bicycle, 1 bike helmet, 1 lock)

Learn more

Product History

Every action against a product in Vend will record an event in a searchable product history, or audit trail. If an item is sold, received, voided, or transferred, the product history is updated, with details of the action, date, the user, a link to any sale or orders, and the before and after inventory.

Learn more

Element Integrated Merchant Processing

US based Vend customers can now enjoy full integration with Element credit card processing. You can integrate an existing Element account, or set up and integrate a new account.

We’ve made the setup process as simple as possible. All you need is your account details and a usb card reader. In a few short steps you’ll be up and running.

Staff Sales Targets

Managers will be able to set daily, weekly and monthly sales targets for staff, which can be tracked by the management team. Staff will also be able to see how well they are performing against their targets, visually, in a redesigned staff level dashboard.

Learn more

Shiny New Dashboard & Admin

The dashboard has been completely redesigned from the ground up. Flash graphs have been replaced with HTML5 graphs. Staff & management can track their sales performance. And reporting has been integrated with the dashboard.

And all other admin pages have undergone an extensive design and user interface upgrade, with particular attention paid to the product pages (both product list, and add/edit product pages) and sales history.

Learn more

We hope you enjoy your new Vend, and we look forward to hearing your feedback.

Thank you and happy new year.

Team Vend

Merry Christmas from Vend

Sat, 24 Dec 2011 16:27:00 +1300

From all the team at Vend, we’d like to wish our customers, partners and friends a very merry Christmas. 2011 has been a great year. We’ve retailers around the world change the way they do business for the better, grown as a company, and had a little fun along the way.

2012 promises to kick off with a bang, with some exciting new features on the way. So keep an eye on our blog for updates.

Happy holidays to all, we hope Christmas trading this year has been your best ever!

Team Vend

Left to Right: Rowan, Vaughan, Nick, Kyle, Dom, Mat, Keri, JC (absent, Kara, Morgan, Amiria, Mel, Lauren and Steve)

30 Days of Green Our tireless sales manager in the US, Kara...

Fri, 16 Dec 2011 17:07:00 +1300

30 Days of Green

Our tireless sales manager in the US, Kara (@greenposgirl), has been on a bit of a Yuletide branding mission. It if moves, green it.

It’s like Greenland on St Patricks day.

(My main contribution, I have to confess, is the rather lo-fi Vend branded pen. But I have found it also makes quite a nice desk flag.)

Keep an eye out for the last converts, or join in the fun, at the Twitter hashtag #30DaysOfGreen, and we’ll keep adding photos as they come in.

^Nick

Putting an end to bad point of sale

Tue, 06 Dec 2011 06:15:00 +1300

When we launched www.welovepos.com - a website for sharing point of sale horror stories and celebrating great technology & design - we purchased a clunky, obsolete old cash register called Steve, with one purpose in mind: trashing him.

In fact, we would happily see an end to all the Steves of this world - overpriced, difficult, and dated point of sale systems that just won’t die. So we went to our customers and asked them how we should help Steve meet his maker: by firing squad, smashed to pieces with hammers, or by ‘falling’ off a tall building?

Then as the votes started coming in, we thought, why not all of the above?

But more than just film a few developers with pale skin and bad posture ‘taking it’ to an old cash register with baseball bats, we wanted to tell the story of why we are so determined to put an end to miserable pieces of s**t like Steve, and all his kind, in the first place.

Here is that story. Enjoy. (Watch in full HD glory on YouTube)

(For those of you interested to know what the actual final vote count was from We Love Pos, here it is..)

so what credit card merchants work with the system? What swiper would i use with my 10 iPads?

Mon, 05 Dec 2011 10:02:00 +1300

shortly we’ll be releasing integration with Element, via usb card readers, other major merchant provider integrations will follow. because the reader acts like a keyboard input, integration should work with any iPad compatible reader, or you could use the Apple Camera Kit, like so http://help.vendhq.com/kb/tips/connecting-a-usb-barcode-scanner-to-an-ipad

I'm trying to understand this in-the-cloud business model. How does credit card acceptance come in to play with Vend?

Thanks.

Mon, 05 Dec 2011 09:57:00 +1300

we will shortly release integration with credit card merchant accounts like Element, and others, then we’ll make available tools to enable any 3rd party developer to write integration plugins for other merchant providers

how can i use "print always slinet" in chrome or safari? in firefox there was an option.

Mon, 05 Dec 2011 09:56:00 +1300

we’re working on a couple of solutions. one, we’re confident chrome will release this ability in an future update - you can vote up a ticket on their dev forums http://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=31395

also, we are working with a partner who has a 3d party app for windows that will automate this process. final testing should be finished very soon for release.

Vend, Shopify & Xero: helping a new breed of retailers bloom

Tue, 22 Nov 2011 11:52:00 +1300

As giant retailers struggle to survive in the latest wave of the global financial crisis, in the busy build-up to Christmas, a new breed of small, boutique and artisan retailers is thriving.

Retailers such as Taylor Stitch, a tailored clothing company based out of San Francisco.

Taylor Stitch were able to quickly set up a sophisticated retail operation, one which works both online and offline, and runs on any laptop, tablet, or even just a phone. And they were able do it without the large initial investment in hardware and software such a system used to demand, or the ongoing hassles of ownership.

At Vend point of sale, we’re proud to be part of their story.

We’ve worked closely with Shopify ecommerce and Xero online accounting to develop a set of business tools that integrate seamlessly, ‘in the cloud’, synchronising sales, customer and inventory data in real time, and letting retailers like Taylor Stitch get on with what they do best: selling stuff.

To see small businesses doing so well in the face of such uncertain global economic times is an inspiring story.

But don’t just take our word for it. Watch the video profile on Taylor Stitch, and find out more at vendhq.com/retail

Vend in the USA Radar Rap

Wed, 16 Nov 2011 09:46:34 +1300

Last week our CEO and founder, Vaughan Rowsell, joined us in the US for another action packed week. He was here to present the Vend story and product at the 18th Under the Radar Conference, amongst 28 other selected startups. We thank you for all of the cheers, support and tweets throughout.

It was an honor and a privilege to spend the day with passionate and dedicated entrepreneurs. Vaughan presented following a competitive line up of Revel Systems, Seamless Receipts and Slice. We wish to congratulate all of the presenters in our category, and especially Slice, in winning the hearts of the judges and audience in our category of Retail 2.0.

We additionally enjoyed meeting up with some of our current and future partners at the 8th Annual Sleeter Conference. Despite a challenging few days with no Internet at the Cosmopolitan in Las Vegas, the Sleeter team, speakers, and vendors led us through thoughtful sessions on the future of small business accounting.

While we did track down coffee strong enough to keep us moving forward, we believe there exists a gap in the market, and hence tremendous business opportunity, for a quality coffee house (running Vend, of course) in Las Vegas.

^ Kara

VendBlog

Vender of the week: Agatha Paris

Silent printing for Vend on Google Chrome

eAngulus Silent Print for VendHQ

Kiosk Printing for Google Chrome

Vender of the week: Man O' War Tasting Room

Vend: 2011 Xero Add-On Partner of the Year #xerocon

Vender of the week: An Eye 4 Art

Vender of the week: Caribou Baby

Love your customers: with Peoplemine for Vend

Getting social with friends of Vend

Vender of the week: Quilted Thimble Cottage

Meet the team: Keri Henare

Vend support moving to Zendesk

New year, new Vend

Merry Christmas from Vend

30 Days of Green Our tireless sales manager in the US, Kara...

30 Days of Green

Putting an end to bad point of sale

so what credit card merchants work with the system? What swiper would i use with my 10 iPads?

I'm trying to understand this in-the-cloud business model. How does credit card acceptance come in to play with Vend? Thanks.

how can i use "print always slinet" in chrome or safari? in firefox there was an option.

Vend, Shopify & Xero: helping a new breed of retailers bloom

Vend in the USA Radar Rap

I'm trying to understand this in-the-cloud business model. How does credit card acceptance come in to play with Vend?

Thanks.