The Company

• The Lilly Pad Village (TLPV) is located in Blue Ridge, Georgia, about an hour and a half from both Atlanta and Chattanooga by car. They started as a quaint coffee shop and evolved into a premier destination spot for gem mining, miniature golf, fishing and hiking. The Lilly Pad serves over 25,000 customers annually.

The Needs

• As The Lilly Pad Village grew, so did their merchandise, customers and employees; this brought on the need to simplify operations.

“Like any other business experiencing exponential growth, we also have our growing pains, trials and errors,” said Geza Csuros, TLPV owner. “For years, all of our activities and merchandise were handled at one single counter with a $65.00 cash register. Bookkeeping and reporting were relatively easy and managed by the two owners operating the business.”

• Increased merchandising required a POS system that could offer inventory control; more employees brought on the need to track hours and with the expansion of activities and increased sales came the need to streamline reporting and accounting.
• TLPV needed a portable POS system, which synchronized and afforded a central reporting capability.

“Our activities take place at a different site on our property and in our pre-SalesVu era, that required customers to check in at our office, make their purchases and head out to their activities,” said Csuros. “We were actually missing sales and if the customer wished to make another purchase, they then had to head back to the office to pay before returning to their activity.”

The SalesVu Decision

• The Lilly Pad Village looked at many different POS systems. According to Csuros, most offered great solutions and were affordable and flexible enough for their needs, but lacked one thing: they were PC based.
• TLPV also looked at Square and PayPal’s systems, but neither one had the capability to address all of their requirements as SalesVu does.

The Results

• TLPV currently uses an iPad POS system at their main office/shop and has iPhone systems set up at their satellite activity spots. This allowed them to also set up “gift shops” at the activity locations but more importantly they can now accept credit cards>/font> on the fly.

“At the end of the day, it is a simple five-minute operation to synchronize sales, check employee hours and look at our inventory,” said Csuros. “We also sell some consignment items – SalesVu is a great asset in helping us keep track!”

• The Lilly Pad Village also offers online ticket sales. Prior to using SalesVu, they paid 3% to a company that allowed online ticket sales plus 3.5% to PayPal. SalesVu allows incorporating and selling your inventory — or tickets, in TLPV’s case — on your own website.

“Integration is easy and the final cost to us is only a 2.7% flat fee,” said Csuros.

• Additionally, SalesVu is free. TLPV chose to use SalesVu’s merchant services, Mercury Payment, as it was more convenient. You can still use your existing credit card processing if you wish, but The Lilly Pad found they saved money by switching to Mercury, even after paying the $300 contract cancellation fee to their previous provider. The percentage charged by Mercury is actually slightly higher than their previous provider, but that is all you pay.

“Our previous provider “penny-and-dimed” us each month with one fee or another added to their bill (close to $100 each month),” said Csuros. “We pay 2.7% flat; with NO cancellation fee should we decide to terminate our account.”

To find out more about The Lilly Pad Village, check out their website: www.lillypadvillage.com or like their Facebook page!