VIDEO: Springboard Retail Product Spotlight

Welcome TechnologyAvice Viewers, to this week's product spotlight. Today I'm joined by Gordon Russell, the CEO of Springboard Retail. Gordon, We'll go ahead and jump right into the first question. Describe Springboard Retail in one sentence. Springboard Retail is a retail management system including point of sale and end to end functionality for multi-channel, multi-unit retailers and specifically geared towards multi-unit larger retailers” Great.

What differentiates you from your competitors? I think, at the highest level what differentiates us is the fact that we are retailers. I’m a 20 years veteran of specialty apparel retailing, and actually built the system based on my experiences in that roll. We have domain knowledge that is outstanding and a differentiators in that it’s reflected in our product. Retailers who are using our product understand quickly and instinctively that it was built by someone who understands their business.” Wonderful, well tell us about your ideal customer.

Our ideal customer would be a retailer that sells a higher valued product that has repeat customer traffic, that get’s to know their customer, and has a relationship with their customer. A retailer that has multiple channels and/or that has multiple store fronts. We handle all that functionality that they require to make their business successful. Springboard retail is very flexible and extensible, and we have a variety of customers.Some of the ones that come to mind are regional retailers like Vestique, which is in the Carolinas.

I think they have 10 stores. They are apparel retailers, footwear, accessories, gifts with a strong social presence and web site. We have several apparel retailers that are more national in scope. We have one called Scout and Molly’s which is a startup franchise of apparel retailing. We have one called Mode, which is in the Midwest. XCVI which is a national wholesale brand that moved into brick and mortar retailing recently. They actually started with Square, converted to shop keep, and then from shop keep went to Springboard Retail as they grew.

Those are several examples of retailers that are our customers. Tell, us about your pricing. As a former retailer I’m very sensitive to pricing. I was always frustrated by the fact that I would always have to buy additional seats, licenses, support, maintenance and all this other stuff. So we have really kept it really simple. Springboard is a cloud hosted web based suite of applications. We charge based on active selling stations per month. We ramp up with a retailer when they are in their busy season, and at peak they can easily launch a new selling station on an iPad, and iPad mini, a windows laptop, a macbook (we are portable across platforms and devices), and then when they get into slower periods where they don’t utilize those selling stations they are not charged for those selling stations.

We also have a tiered structure. Smaller retailers, that don’t need as much functionality, can start on what we call our standard tier, and then we have professional, enterprise, and we have our franchise tier. It’s geared both on the tiered level for functions and features, and everyone pays only when they use an active selling station. Well, what kind of limitations does Springboard Retail have? A limitation Springboard Retail has is that we don’t handle anything in the quick serve or the food side of retail.

If you’ve got a coffee shop, an ice cream shop, or a restaurant we don’t have functionality to support that. That’s a separate segment that one day we will get into, but that’s not a segment we are approaching right now. Great, well lets talk about implementation. We at Springboard Retail have created a product that is really simple to implement. We have had many retailers that have had little contact with us and have implemented Springboard Retail successfully on their own.

We have a fully functional customer success team and professional services team that’s available to handle implementation and professional services for retailers that need it. The best practice that we have come up with for retailers is to utilize, what we call, our quick start. It provides them with a dedicated customer success resource which will sit down with them and map out their implementation, and configure the product, and help them utilize their needs and utilize Springboard to the fullest.

Also, identify requirements for professional services such as data migration or implementation which we can handle as well. Well that all great, thankyou for joining us Gordon. If you would like to find out more about Springboard Retail check out our website, TechnologyAdvice.com, where we can help you find the best technology to fit the needs for your business. Thanks for watching.