Strategic Pricing and Promotions Move More Products with Tighter Financial Control
As one of the largest family-owned and operated pet stores in Oregon, Theresa’s Country Feed & Pet strives to keep prices as low as possible. With more than 12,000 SKUs and 70,000 items on-hand within a 10,000 square-foot store, there’s something to please even the most finicky of pets.
But competitive pricing isn’t all that draws customers through the doors. Employees at the register are ready to help, armed with the latest product and sale information, and recognizing repeat customers—and their pets—by name.
So when the store’s legacy point-of-sale (POS) system was pushed to the brink, going offline and impacting operations, it was time to act. Kalise Sampson, General Manager of Theresa’s Country Feed & Pet, details the move to Epicor Propello deployed in the cloud and the impressive ROI that resulted from automating product purchasing, discounting, and inventory.
Theresa’s Country Feed & Pet’s existing POS system was struggling to keep up with the pace of business. The system routinely went offline, bringing POS activities to a halt. Plus, limited functionality meant the store was relying on cumbersome, manual processes like cross-checking invoices for thousands of items delivered each week.
“We needed a sophisticated, yet intuitive, retail management solution to support our high order and sales volumes,” shares Sampson. “And being cloud-based was a bonus, giving us much-needed reliability to deliver the prompt service we’re known for in the community.”
Sampson researched several solutions, and smaller systems were quickly ruled out as they were unable to meet requirements for scalability, inventory management, and in-depth reporting. On the contrary, the ease of use, streamlined purchasing and receiving, and automated ordering within Propello made the decision a no-brainer. The store could also take the key step of deploying Propello in the cloud, giving the retailer the benefit of extended uptime and 24x7 offline access.
”The intuitive interface within Propello was an immediate draw, as we realized we could quickly train and onboard employees,” Sampson explains. “We were sold, and the added endorsement from our sister store just sealed the deal.”
The Propello implementation process was quick, and the team promptly responded to questions. Sampson shares the value of having Epicor Professional Services available to assist with data cleansing, imports, and staff training.
“Epicor created a test environment, which delivered two huge benefits: ensuring data was uploaded correctly and allowing us to train staff. A week before we went live, associates were able to run sample transactions in Propello without impacting financials—a valuable training tool.”
Sampson appreciates Propello’s ease of use at the point of sale, making purchases and returns simple for customers. Propello’s Quick Find functionality, along with the ability to add product images, helps staff save time, no longer needing to sift through a large binder of barcodes.
Propello is in use throughout the store, all day every day, with cashiers handling transactions and staff managing backend operations. Aiming to meet customers’ product preferences, the store regularly evaluates which products should continue to be stocked. With Propello, Sampson quickly assesses fill rates by supplier, swapping in replacement brands for underperformers and adding a new primary supplier in seconds.
The inventory team also benefits from faster ways of working, processing purchase orders with mobile scanners. “We love the mobility and instant insights into inventory levels on the floor, something we didn’t have the capacity to do before.” And for the store’s big anniversary sale, clerks with Zebra mobile handhelds can go down the line and quickly ring up customers paying by credit card.
Prior to Propello, Theresa’s Country Feed & Pet would set an order threshold, and the system would continue ordering to that amount—regardless of what was actually sold. This required Sampson to manually change each individual order point, sifting through hundreds of items per order.
With the company doing upwards of 10 orders per week, resulting in 15 palettes of products, leveraging calculated order points in Propello has brought huge efficiency gains. Now orders are based on actual sales, streamlining ordering, reducing excess inventory, and saving the store at least 10 hours/week.
“If we haven’t sold something, an order isn’t created—exactly what should happen,” Sampson says. “We do an automated order run and then can go on the floor and check inventory holes with our scanners to validate exactly what we need, boosting inventory accuracy.”
Every quarter, Theresa’s Country Feed & Pet changes endcap displays, with 500 products moving in and out of rotation. Prior to Propello, Sampson manually adjusted every single price at the beginning of the quarter, the night before a new sale began, repeating the tedious process at quarter’s end. With the Propello pricing engine, the process is now fast and automated. Sampson simply sets the start and end date for endcap promotional products—saving 20 hours each quarter.
And the store applies the same streamlined price management for one-off product discounts and select manufacturer sales. “The ability to quickly set strategic pricing and promotions was the top reason I selected Propello,” Sampson explains. “We apply discounts to a single product category within seconds, scheduling a sale to run for a set amount of time. This flexibility is ideal for our manufacturers who want to move specific products and keeps items competitively priced.”
With Propello POS capabilities, cashiers are more efficient at the register and more informed. Current promotions and customer discounts are accurately captured in the system, eliminating the need for manual, and sometimes unauthorized, price adjustments. As a result, the store has helped to reduce price overrides by 50%, improving financial management and helping to keep more money inside the business.
The real-time insight we have into sales transactions, pricing, and inventory is vital as manufacturers reimburse us for sales,” Sampson explains. “Now we move products faster, with tight financial control and confidence.
And the store isn’t the only one reaping financial benefits. Theresa’s Country Feed & Pet recently put the donation feature within Propello to work, giving customers the option to donate $1, $3, or $5 at checkout—bringing in $5,000 for local charities.
The store relies on dashboards and reporting within Propello to stay on top of key business metrics, including current and historical sales data. Specifically, Sampson tracks performance by manufacturers, including products sold and discounts, as well as comparing individual unit sales across a two-year span to fine-tune purchasing decisions.
Propello has been a game-changer, taking the guesswork out of operations and saving countless hours on backend processes. As a result, we have the right products on the shelves at the right price to keep customers and suppliers happy.
