The Library Downtown concept in LA
The Library Store is a long-term client of One Step Retail Solutions and Retail Pro user, focusing on novelty merchandise within the reading culture. Their items are fun and you will find many witty takes on popular novels as well as miscellaneous swag for a wide variety of bookworms. In tune with the trends and resources available to them, they successfully launched a mobile store in December of 2012 with the now popular Library Store truck that can be found at the Downtown Los Angeles Art Walk most Thursdays and at last weekend’s Festival of Books on the campus of USC.
The Library Store Downtown LA has an entirely unique objective, to not only inspire the Angelino reading culture but to invest in library programs across the city (adult literacy programs, children’s programs, reading corners, live homework help, etc.). Profits from The Library Store get pushed down to these important programs.
Initially operating the mobile store entirely by hand, they had already been spoiled by Retail Pro for their brick-and-mortar location and realized a mobile POS option was needed to support their new needs. They diligently reviewed the options, including popular mobile POS start-ups offering inexpensive monthly payments of $50 and under. However, those systems did not tie in with their existing POS and did not offer complete inventory control, with over 100 SKUs in the mobile store and 5,000 SKUs in the brick-and-mortar store. It was required, in the words of Christine Romero of the Library Store, to “keep it simple, keep it easy and avoid having to look in multiple places for our data. We needed to react faster.”
“We are small, but we do a lot of business and need to know our cost of goods, be able to spread the freight, do a discount, averages, etc. If we are just using a Point of Sale to do transactions we wouldn’t have had the accuracy that we will get with Retail Pro.” Christine Romero goes on to say, “It was a bigger investment, but we are doing enough business to need to be on top of these things. It is very simplistic with Retail Pro. If we had 20 SKUs, Square would have been fine. We have over 100 SKUs on the mobile store and 5,000 SKUs in store. The app is user friendly, and our customers love to ‘sign’ their sales slips using their fingers. ”
If you are a book lover, be sure to check out their online store and if you are in the LA area follow the Library Truck on Twitter for their upcoming locations and events, “If you are really into reading and book or school items with a twist, stationary, jewelry, whatever it is, we are the source on that,” according to Christine.
No wonder this forward thinking retailer won LA Weekly’s Best Gift Shop 2012 and Best Downtown Bookstore in 2010 AND 2011.
