Draft And Custom Orders For Shopify POS

One of the areas within the Shopify ecosystem that has tons of room for growth and we, at Lazer, are very bullish on is Shopify POS. That's why we're excited to launch our first app for the Shopify + POS App Store: Draft And Custom Orders For Shopify POS

Shopify is extremely powerful and is currently the best option for anyone selling physical products online and at scale. Their ability to empower entrepreneurs and give them the tools and capabilities to take an idea and scale that idea to become a successful business with the least amount of friction is amazing.

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However, not all businesses that sell products should purely sell those products online. Many should also sell in-person and offer their customer base unique experiences that hold true to their brand and allow them to build deeper relationships with them. A great example of this is KOTN. KOTN is a Canadian brand that offers quality clothing essentials, ethically made from authentic Egyptian cotton. In addition to being successful online, KOTN does a tremendous job of extending their brand and experience through their physical retail stores.

This is why POS is such a huge area of growth for Shopify. To continue to empower the brands and merchants already leveraging Shopify online but in a physical sense as well - it's a natural extension.

‍However, Shopify POS is still relatively new and has its gaps. One of them being the inability to empower hybrid retailers to a certain level. In our definition, a hybrid retailer is someone who not only sells physical products, but also may sell services or experiences. These hybrid retailers don't necessarily operate the same way as a retailer that purely sells physical products does. There tends to be more logistics, coordination, scheduling, customization, and other needs around the operation that makes these businesses unique and complex.

A good example of this is a jewelry store. A jewelry store sells jewelry to people, but can also sell repairs or customization services. When a jewelry store offers a repair or customization as a service, the pricing and creation of the service tends to be different. There tends to be a time/duration associated with the service, and hourly rate that will be charged to the customer, specific notes/statuses associated with the service, who it's assigned to, and more. Furthermore, before even booking a customer for these services, oftentimes merchants will need to send the quote and breakdown to the customer first for approval.

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Currently, Shopify POS, by default, only allows you to view, select and add products from your inventory to the POS cart and checkout/charge your customers. There is no way to create custom orders, services or experiences, alongside all of the necessary details, add them to the POS cart and transact your customer. It makes it extremely difficult for hybrid retailers to operate efficiently with Shopify POS.

These reasons were why we decided to build this app. To help service and experience based retailers (hybrid retailers) be successful on Shopify.

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With Draft And Custom Orders For Shopify POS you can now do the following all within the Shopify POS app for any device:

1. Add existing products from your current inventory
2. Create and attach a new service (including the length of the service, the per-hour rate, and any supplementary notes)
3. Create and attach any new custom products that aren't currently in your inventory
4. Specify a workflow status with your custom draft order (i.e. New, Estimate, Open, Pending, Completed)
5. Create a new and/or attach an existing customer to the custom draft order
6. Set a discount on the overall custom draft order
7. Email the breakdown of the custom draft order to the selected customer
8. Add the custom draft order straight to the POS cart

This is just the first step towards empowering hybrid retailers! We plan on extending this further by attaching scheduling, employee assignment, and more towards custom draft orders in Shopify POS.

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