Who: Sam’s Barbers
What: A family-run chain of barber shops since 1901
Where: Dublin, Ireland
Brothers Sam and James Donnelly, the fourth generation of the Donnelly family, have recently taken over the reins at Sam’s Barbers from their father, Stanley. And they’ve set about modernising the business with technology.
“Before using Vend, we used old fashioned tills, making it impossible to manage our stock of over 70 different men’s hair styling products,” say the brothers. “With the Vend app, we were able to customise the technology to our business – going into granular detail so that everything, whether a service or product, is itemised. For example, how many haircuts we’ve done, how many products each staff member has sold, and even what the VAT is on it.
“A lot of other POS providers are very basic and don’t offer many features. We found that even software made specifically for barbers wasn’t suitable for our business either. Some of the apps also operated offline and were email-based rather than being in the cloud. This meant we couldn’t see how many haircuts we did or how many haircare products we had sold on the spot.”
Since installing Vend, Sam and James have been able to save huge amounts of time in their weekly banking, and now have faster and more efficient business processes.
“It’s allowed us to run our business more efficiently – at an affordable price. The technology has also helped us innovate our staff pay structure, changing the way in which we pay staff their wages and tips. This in turn helps us manage our finances. We can now easily calculate staff commission from tips and sales at the end of every week. Our accountant now only needs our log in details to Vend to access all this information, saving us both time and money.”
“Our staff love it which is another great thing about Vend. It was so easy to use and only took me four hours to train all 10 of our staff members across the two stores that use it. And due to the systems being updated in real-time, I’m now able to spot mistakes before staff even report it back to me. I can manage and fix problems straight away.”
With Vend in two of its stores already, the brothers have plans to roll it out across all their shops in the future. They’re also trialling other innovations such as using the software to issue gift cards via a customer’s mobile phone, and using Vend Ecommerce for their online store to reach a wider audience.
“With a POS that has such powerful capabilities, it would seem crazy not to take advantage of it. It’s the next logical step to help increase our business sales.”
“Vend has made paying for a haircut so much easier and convenient for our customers – but it’s also made life easier for our staff.”
About Kate Webby
Kate is the guardian of communications at Vend. Her love of retail began with ice cream (selling it at music festivals), jewellery (selling it in department stores), and badly made coffee (serving it in cafes). Having lived and worked for technology companies across the oceans, Kate loves sharing Vend's story and the success of its amazing customers around the world.
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