Specialty retail is the store that is about something: books, games, toys, craft, music, art supplies, cookware, gifts, a hobby. Its range is deep and long-tailed, its suppliers are many and often small, its staff know the subject, and its customers come for advice, for the thing they cannot find elsewhere, and for the order the store will place for them. Increasingly it also sells to a national audience online from the same shelves. With Pentoggle, a specialty retailer can describe how their catalogue, their suppliers and their customers actually work and generate the starting application around it.
This page is for the niche store of any subject, independent or small chain. Where a specialty store is also a fashion boutique, Fashion Retail Software applies; where it holds makers' stock on consignment, Retail Consignment Management Software carries the mechanics; where it places special orders, Retail Order Management Software does. This page is where they combine around a subject.
Specialty categories can carry obligations that differ by place and change, around toys and children's products, consumer sales, events and customer data. This page describes the workflow and states none of them. Establish what applies with a suitable adviser.
Most specialty retailers already run an accounting system such as QuickBooks, Tally or Xero, a POS, and where they sell online, a web platform. Those stay where they are. What is often still managed outside them is the store's knowledge: the catalogue with the attributes customers ask about, the small supplier who takes orders by email, the special order promised for next week, the maker owed for last month, and the customer who collects a particular kind of thing.
Key takeaways
- The range is the business and it is long-tailed. Many items sell rarely and matter greatly, and the store's value is in having them or getting them, not in turning them fast.
- Suppliers are many, small and inconsistent. Items arrive without barcodes, invoices arrive in every format, and the supplier record has to hold how each one actually works.
- Special orders are a core service, not an exception. A store that can get anything is chosen for it, and a special order is a promise with a supplier, a date and a waiting customer.
- The customer's interest is the record. Knowing what someone collects, plays, reads or makes is what turns a new arrival into a sale to a named person.
- A useful number is the share of sales from items the store does not hold on the shelf, special orders and online long tail, read alongside days of cover on the slow range.
How a specialty store makes money
A specialty store earns a margin on a range that a general retailer will not carry, sold to customers who value the depth and the advice. The margin per item varies by category and by supplier; the volume per item is often low; and the result depends on the range being right for the customers the store has, on stock turning slowly enough to be deep and fast enough to pay for the space, and on the service that sits around the shelf.
That service has three parts. Advice: staff who know the subject and can recommend, which is what customers cannot get online and why they come in. Special orders: getting the thing not in stock from a supplier the store knows, which extends the range beyond the shelves and earns a margin on something the store never had to hold. And community: events, classes, launches, clubs and signings that bring customers in, sell the products around them and make the store a place rather than a shop.
Consignment from local makers and small brands widens the range without tying up cash, and it makes the store a channel for people who could not otherwise reach its customers. The maker owns the stock until it sells; the store settles on what sold and needs a record the maker can trust.
Online selling changes the economics for a small specialty store more than for most. The range that turns slowly in one town turns faster across a country, and the same shelf serves both. The cost is fulfilment from a store not designed for it, and the risk is selling the last one twice.
Gift cards and gift wrapping are part of the offer for stores whose customers are often buying for someone else, and the outstanding gift card balance is an obligation the store should know.
The cost rhythm that runs against it
Stock arrives from many suppliers on no common cycle, in small quantities, often without retail barcodes, with invoices in every format, and sometimes on consignment rather than purchase. Each delivery is a small receiving job with its own quirks, and the supplier record has to hold them.
Once on the shelf, most items sit. The range is deep by design, and a deep range is cash tied up in slow stock. The store's judgement is which slow items are the point and which are a mistake, and a report that treats the whole long tail as dead stock is no help.
Special orders go to suppliers with lead times the store does not control, sometimes to suppliers the store has not used before, with a customer who was given a date and often paid a deposit. Consignment settlements are due to makers on a cycle. Events cost time and stock and are worth what they sell around them.
Online orders arrive against the same shelf, are picked by staff who are also serving the floor, and are shipped in parcels from a store that keeps its packing materials under the counter.
Set against a margin earned on depth and service, this rhythm means the store needs a catalogue rich enough to search, suppliers with their own ways of working recorded, items coded at receiving when they arrive bare, special orders as records with dates, consignment held apart with statements, customers with their interests, and one stock figure serving the shelf and the website.
Where the record usually breaks
A specialty store's POS records the sale. The breaks are in the catalogue, the suppliers and the promises.
When the catalogue is a title and a price
The customer asks for something by an attribute: an author, a scale, a gauge, a yarn weight, a game's player count. The system holds a name and a price, and the answer is in the head of whoever is on the floor.
When the supplier is an email address
Forty suppliers, each with a way of taking orders, a lead time, a minimum and a habit. None of it is written down. The order to the small press goes to the wrong person and takes a month.
When the special order is a notebook
Customers' orders are written in a book at the counter. What was ordered from whom, whether it arrived and whether the customer was called are three different questions with three different answers depending on who looks.
When the maker's statement is a guess
A local maker left thirty pieces. Some sold, some were moved to the window, one was given to a customer as a replacement. The settlement is worked out from the till roll and the maker's memory.
What specialty retail software holds
A catalogue with attributes
Every item with the attributes customers search and ask by, author, maker, series, scale, size, material, age range, player count, or whatever the subject needs, so a question at the counter is a lookup.
Many small suppliers
Each supplier with how they take orders, their lead time, minimum, terms and quirks, so any staff member can place an order the way that supplier expects.
Receiving bare items
Stock received against orders, with items arriving without a barcode given an internal code and a label at the door before they reach the shelf.
Special orders
Non-stock items ordered for a customer against a supplier, with any deposit, a promised date, a status and the call when it arrives.
Maker consignment
Stock held for makers and small brands as theirs, received and confirmed, sold and attributed, with a statement each maker can reconcile and a settlement on the agreed terms.
Customers and interests
Each customer with their purchases and what they collect, play, read or make, so a new arrival can be matched to a person and a task raised.
Events and classes
Bookings, attendance, the stock sold around each event, and the cost, so the store knows which events pay.
The shelf online
One stock figure serving the counter and the website, with online orders in the same queue and picked from the same shelf, and the last unit not sold twice.
Workflows this business depends on
- Retail Order Management Software, because special orders are a core service and each is a promise with a supplier, a date and a waiting customer.
- Retail Consignment Management Software, because makers' stock is held and not owned, and the maker needs a statement the store can stand behind.
- Retail Barcode and Label Software, because a large share of stock arrives from small suppliers with no retail barcode and has to be coded at the door.
- Retail Supplier Management Software, because suppliers are many and small, and how each one works has to be written down rather than remembered.
- Retail CRM Software, because the customer's interest is what turns a new arrival into a sale, and it should belong to the store rather than to one member of staff.
- Retail E-commerce Management Software, because a small store reaches a national audience online from the same shelf, and content quality carries the sale.
- Retail Online-Offline Inventory Software, because the counter and the website sell from one shelf and the last copy is the one that collides.
- Retail Gift Card Management Software, because customers buy for others, gift cards are common, and the outstanding balance is an obligation to know.
Why specialty retailers choose Pentoggle
A catalogue that answers the question
Attributes the customer asks by, on every item, so the answer is a lookup rather than a memory.
Suppliers as they actually work
Each small supplier's ordering method, lead time and habits recorded, so any staff member can order correctly.
Special orders as promises kept
Supplier, deposit, date, status and the call on arrival, so the notebook at the counter is retired.
Makers paid from a record they can check
Consignment held apart, sales attributed, statements reconcilable, settlement on the agreed terms.
Sits around your accounting, your POS and your web platform
QuickBooks, Tally, Xero and comparable systems continue handling the books. Your POS continues at the counter and your web platform runs the site. Pentoggle holds the catalogue, the suppliers and the promises between them.
A useful number for a specialty store
The share of sales from items the store does not hold on the shelf, special orders and the online long tail, read alongside days of cover on the slow range.
The first is the range beyond the shelves working. A store that can get anything, and sells a meaningful share that way, is earning on depth it never had to stock, and the number shows how much of the store's value is in that service.
The second is the cost of the depth it does stock. Read by category and against the store's own judgement of what is slow by design, so that the long tail that defines the store is not mistaken for dead stock, and the tail that is a mistake is not hidden among it.
Read special orders late against their promised date beneath both. The service is only worth the sales it brings if the promises are kept, and the late list is where they are not.
Ready to build specialty retail software?
You know your subject better than anyone in town.
You may not be able to say which special orders are late this week, what you owe each maker for last month, or which of your customers would want the thing that arrived on Tuesday.
Describe your range, your suppliers and how you serve your customers to Pentoggle in plain English and generate a working first version in hours, then refine it around your process.