The Company
Blowback Armory (BA) is an airsoft company that specializes in the most realistic airsoft guns (primarily gas blowback airsoft guns). BA caters guns and parts and does custom work and build services.
“We’re definitely more of a custom shop than any other company, currently,” said Owner John Young. “We also have a vision of bringing a truly realistic, low cost, high safety training solution for tactical force-on-force applications for law enforcement, military and even civilian groups that are interested in doing defense training with a “non-gun” sim weapon.”
BA also does in-house design and manufacturing of some items and hopes to expand with their own line of Made-in-USA “Training Grade” airsoft solutions.
“Of course, we also love supporting the consumer airsoft community as well and offering services that are unheard of in the industry,” said Young.
The Needs
Blowback Armory needed an mPOS solution because they go out to local airsoft games and community events.
“We really didn’t like the idea of having a bulky POS in the shop plus a pseudo mobile POS for events and separate books, etc,” said Young. “We’re fans of simplicity.”
iPad POS Solutions
BA tried Square, SalesVu, an mPOS from their usual merchant service provider and several others but felt that they were doing more work than they needed to be doing. As Young explained, some apps were very expensive — “hundreds or thousands for a turnkey solution.”
“SalesVu is the most robust non-purchase retail POS solution that we’ve seen,” said Young. “It really seemed different from the rest of the ‘free’ solutions in that there is a more conventional admin-type interface available online, multiple ways to administer, etc.”
Using SalesVu
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Young likes how the category system works and that it supports multiple devices.
“The features list is really surprising, seeing as this is a non-purchase app,” said Young.
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The search feature is very helpful at BA.
“As simple as it sounds, [the search feature] really cuts down on the time needed to search for items in multiple categories,” said Young. “With another solution I used, I had to sift through my items by category. The end result would be excessive lengths of time to ring up a customer, which is kind of counterproductive; faster times at the register means more sales, simple as that.”
The Results
“SalesVu has really simplified the whole POS enigma,” said Young. “POS systems can be very complex, not to mention expensive. With SalesVu, we have a simple, all-in-one solution that we can take anywhere and really use any way we’d like. It’s simple in all the right ways, powerful and feature-rich. It just works!”
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Blowback Armory was able to save money
“Anyone that’s thought about getting a POS system or iOS-based POS should be well aware the pricing starts in the thousands for one system,” said Young. “We bought an iPad many times cheaper and many times cooler. Plus we can take it with us.”
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Simplified taxes
“It makes taxes a breeze; I click a few buttons and I’m staring at all the sales I’ve done from web to in-store to an event,” said Young. “It really couldn’t be easier.”
For more information about Blowback Armory, visit www.blowbackarmory.com, like their Facebook or check them out on Twitter @BlowbackArmory
