Bottom Line Up Front: Costco is one of the most popular retail chains in America. Find out how you can use InkSoft’s tools to give your customers some of that same convenience and experience.
Whether you shop there or not, you probably know that Costco is one of the most popular retail chains in the country for groceries and household goods. Thanks to their free samples, bulk discount pricing, and popular house brands, they’ve built a loyal customer base over the years.
While running a custom-printed merchandise business is quite different from a box store chain, there are key takeaways on how to use this approach for your shop. If you can offer high-quality products and services and combine them with a positive shopping experience, you’ll create value that keeps people coming back. And you’ll help build a reputation so those long-term clients recommend you to new customers.
Here are a couple of easy ways you can use InkSoft tools to mimic the Costco business model:
Creating a Set Structure for Customer Stores
One of Costco’s most famous attributes is its house brand, Kirkland. While you don’t necessarily have to create a “house brand” for your shop, having a standard product lineup and overall look for customer stores is a great way to keep things simple and easy. With InkSoft’s online stores, you can set up these storefronts.
For example, if you want to offer stores to school sports teams, you can set up a standardized look for those stores, so customers can quickly identify what they’ll get by setting one up.
And if there are a standard set of products that go in each of these stores, like T-shirts, hoodies, and caps, you can quickly create sample images of decorated products for the storefront with the Rapid Product Creator. If that customer decides they want to add additional products to the store, you can easily add that design to new products and upload the image.
Easy Checkout and E-Commerce
Self-checkout is a popular option at stores like Costco because it saves customers time. And they still get the same secure transaction they’d experience with a regular register checkout. Plus, most popular retail stores offer multiple payment options, which is attractive to modern shoppers.
Whether it’s a local school, charitable foundation, brewery, or other small business, your customers will also want an online storefront that offers a similar convenience to their shoppers.
That’s where InkSoft Stores can help drive that experience home thanks to:
- Open 24/7: Online stores mean shoppers can hop on whenever it’s convenient for them to make their purchase. Stores can be configured to stay open indefinitely, or run for a limited amount of time for events like fundraisers.
- Easy ordering: InkSoft stores simplify the ordering process since shoppers can simply click and add whatever products they want, and you get a concise form with what you and your team need to print and pack. No messy paper order forms, confusing emails, or forgotten payments. Plus, once all those orders are shipped, that information is stored in the cloud, so you can easily set up a reorder.
- Secure payment and checkout: Whether customers shop in-store or online, one big concern that’s front of mind for everyone these days is a secure checkout. InkSoft Stores have a secure checkout system so all your client’s customers can purchase their goods knowing their information is safe.
And InkSoft stores give customers multiple payment options at checkout, giving them that same convenient in-store experience online.
Free Samples with GraphicsFlow
One of Costco’s most popular features is the store’s free samples. Shoppers get to try out the grocery items, which helps entice them to buy those products. While you can’t frequently hand out printed merch to your customers for free and stay profitable, there are other ways to give them “free samples” to bring in more business and showcase your shop’s talents.
If you combine the power of InkSoft stores with GraphicsFlow’s Art Approvals workspace, you’ll have a set of tools that ties everything together. With GraphicsFlow, you can create customer artwork samples efficiently, reducing overhead and labor hours. That’s thanks to a massive art library of design ideas, clipart, and font, which you can use to efficiently create free mockups for customers.
You can create multiple design ideas quickly for your customers, or send them a link to your Art Portal; a public-facing link that gives customers the ability to browse that same catalog and send you their design ideas. Use GraphicsFlow to start the design creation conversation with your customers faster, and move to production quicker.
While your shop can’t necessarily offer free chicken nuggets and cookie samples (although people rarely turn down free food!), you can use these tools to give your customers an experience that presents you as a shop with the best value and services. With the combination of modern online stores, easy checkout processes, and free virtual samples, you can print the custom-branded merchandise your customers want while improving your team’s order processing and art creation processes.
Ready to start offering your customers better options? Contact a Client Advisor today for a 15-minute tour of InkSoft.
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