Lilly Pulitzer Launches Mobile POS For In-Store Sales

By Hannah Ash, contributing writer

Last month, retail and design chain Lilly Pulitzer announced a new addition to its eight elite ‘In The Pink Stores’. The In The Pink Stores are currently Pulitzer’s largest chain of signature stores in the United States: markets served include elite locales such as its flagship store on Boston’s high-end Newbury Street and the exclusive getaway island of Nantucket.

Pulitzer first piloted this innovative program in the flagship store by removing all standard registers and replacing them with the more flexible, one hundred percent mobile POS solutions powered by Springboard Retail and flexible devices including iPads and iPhones. Similar to the Apple Store experience, Pulitzer customers can now check out wherever and whenever they happen to be within the store. Making the checking-out experience flexible has freed-up coveted retail space within the stores and enhanced the overall luxurious Pulitzer aesthetic while providing customers with added convenience. In The Pink District Manager Jess Newman explained that enhancing the retail showroom by removing clunky registers is having a positive effect on store sales, stating, “we have reclaimed formerly unproductive square feet in the store. Space that once was occupied by servers, wires, printers and other ugly hardware has been turned into beautiful merchandisable space — and it is boosting store sales."

Though results are still early as stores such as Pulitzer adopt mobile point of sale systems, so far they appear strong. The first eleven days post the roll-out of mPOS showed a substantial 24.5 percent increase over same period sales from the previous year.  As mobile point of sale systems continue to take focus, the check-out stands to be reinvented, or perhaps, entirely replaced. The Springboard Retail POS system is entirely web, or cloud, based — and allows e-commerce to take place on virtually any device that can support the system.