The House Of The Tailor Of Gloucester

This tiny historic building next to the Gloucester Cathedral precincts, immortalised in Beatrix Potter’s second book The Tailor of Gloucester, is now run as a museum and shop by a group local volunteers.The volunteers, many of whom are not computer literate, appreciate the intuitiveness and ease of use of the Actinic EPOS system. Manager Colin Nyland values the management time it saves him, and the information it provides about their products, sales and stock levels.

Associating Beatrix Potter’s Tailor of Gloucester - “a little old man in spectacles, with a pinched face, old crooked fingers, and a suit of thread-bare clothes” - with the latest retail technology isn’t obvious. And indeed the thought of working with a computerised till was a panicky idea for the fifty or so volunteers, aged from 40 something to 70 plus, who staff the museum that now occupies the house made famous by Beatrix Potter’s tale. But they quickly felt at home and their Actinic EPOS solution has been “a saviour”, in the words of the shop manager, Colin Nyland.

Some history first

Back in 1979 Frederick Warne & Co. bought the tiny historic shop at number 9 College Court, next to the Gloucester Cathedral precincts. It had been immortalised in Beatrix Potter’s second book The Tailor of Gloucester, written after she visited the city and heard the story of John Pritchard, the tailor who had made the mayor’s wedding suit with the help of the fairies who finished it at night. Beatrix made the fairies into the little brown mice who assisted the tailor and so the local legend was perpetuated.

The tiny shop was taken over in 1999. But after six years the business was failing so the building went up for sale. Horrified at the prospect of losing an important bit of local heritage and the place becoming a takeaway, the Civic Trust and many local citizens banded together to form The House of the Tailor of Gloucester plc. They raised £200,000 in a few months by selling shares in the company and in 2006 the place was acquired.

A modern retail business emerges

The new owners appointed Colin Nyland, a Civic Trust volunteer, as shop manager as he had experience in retail and office management before his early retirement. He explains,

“The business can’t afford to pay any of its staff so relies entirely on a dedicated band of fifty volunteers who man the tiny museum and its shop in shifts from 10am to 4pm, 7 days a week.”

From the start in early 2007 Colin had the vision to see how Electronic Point of Sale (EPoS) technology could make the business as efficient and effective as possible in its the sales processing, accounting and stock control.

“We looked at several suppliers, asking them to demo their wares to myself and several shop volunteers. We chose Actinic because the salesman listened to our needs rather than just pushing his solution’s features, plus those who tried it gave it the thumbs up. We also liked the fact that Actinic wasn’t a big corporate, but understood our concerns and budgets as a small retailer, and we’ve had excellent post sales service too.”

Benefits

The House of the Tailor of Gloucester bought a single EPoS till, touch screen, barcode reader and software, plus a support contract for about £8,000. Then the equipment was installed by another volunteer, IT consultant, Eddie Eldridge of SoftData.

After just a three hour training session, all of the shop volunteers felt confident to operate the till and barcode reader.

“Most of my team are not computer literate and were very nervous about the prospect, but the touch screen entry proved far easier than keying in purchases and we’ve had no problems,”

comments Colin.

One of Colin’s jobs is controlling the 600 products lines in the shop that range from a 50 pence souvenir pencil to the £120 boxed set of the complete works of Beatrix Potter. The EPoS system allows him to see which items are selling best and which are less popular, so he can be scientific about keeping stock levels to a minimum:

“It’s great to have this information at my fingertips at the end of each day, rather than relying on laborious, inaccurate physical stock takes.”

Besides this, Colin values the fact that the software segregates everything into non-VATable and VATable items for accounting purposes - something that would have had to be done manually in a non-computerised system.

Another aspect of EPoS which Colin appreciates is the daily report he prints off that gives him details like the number of card sales versus cash, what’s sold, and what times of day are busy/slack. Also, over the year he can plot seasonality and know when more or fewer staff might be required on the rota.

Overall, introducing EPoS has saved Colin a lot of management time and he adds,

“I’m confident that the system can cope with even the busiest days in the summer season and that it will take us forward as we grow. After nine month’s trading the shop is on target to achieve our first year’s business plan and having EPoS from the start undoubtedly helped here.”

Next Steps

Colin plans to introduce a web store on the existing website that will use Actinic’s ecommerce software and integrate seamlessly with the computerised till system via Actinic EPoS Link. This will broaden the customer base to a potentially worldwide audience, which means that overseas tourists who want to buy more Beatrix Potter paraphernalia can do so.