What business challenges do you face that are unique to your industry? 💭

[isabelle]

Helllllloooo! How is it already August??

Today we're wondering...

What business challenges do you face that are unique to your industry? 

Veryyy interested in reading your replies 🤓

[LaceySews]

I am a seamstress. I do made to order as well as ready to sell items. When I do made to order I have in stock fabrics with certain amount of yards, and I'm having a hard time trying to figure out how to list my yardage through my website on square so that it minus is the yardage when they order a made to order item, that way if two people order something of the same fabric at the same time it doesn't oversell what I have in stock. If that makes sense.

[lilmadcafe]

I had the same issue about fudge. I was able to break the price down to ounces and weigh what I made and add the amount to my inventory. so my pricing even though at $18.00 a pound comes to around $1.13 per ounce. So maybe you can piece yours out by the inch or by the piece that is required for each design and that subtracts from your overall inventory.

[LaceySews]

Oh thats a good idea! I have over 100 bolts of fabric lol time consuming buuuuut this is definitely a step closer to getting everything streamlined! Thanks for the tip!

[BofBArtStudio]

That is what we do also.  We make glass decor and functional pieces, and we buy sheets of glass by the square foot, but we often use it and calculate it by square inch for costing and customer pricing.

[dandelionFP]

You should join the beta community, there's a new feature they're working on for retail that would perfectly fix the issue you're having!

[LaceySews]

I actually just started with the retail. I just purchased the barcode scanner too! How do I go about doing the beta? I know I had been invited once before when they updated the POS on iphone IOS but not sure how to do it myself. 

Just figured out the barcode labels on retail and I cant wait for that to go into full swing!

[CCollectibles]

Trying to drive traffic to my site and to instill enough confidence in customers to buy from me rather than Amazon, Ebay, Walmart, etc.

[BruceLee]

We are a Specialty Restaurant who serves Thai and Japanese food.  We require our floor staff to know the menu and with COVID, it is not helping us find the staff that we are looking for.  The fact that COVID already cause us to be undermanned,  our standards requiring our applicants to know the menu made it worst and we had to settle for what we can get.

[TPDminot]

Prejudice.

I own a metaphysical supply shop, and I have been harassed by Christians because of it. "We don't want your witch store/devil worshipers around here," they say.

Aside from that, I'm having troubles with getting grants. "We want to help your start up..." but you have to be in business a year or more to apply. Rather annoying.

[SMG21]

Oy. I'm so sorry to hear that. Do you live in the US? What part of the country? 

I know what harassment feels like. 😥I had a brick-and-mortar a number of years ago in NC selling handcrafted leather goods and fine art. The locals were horrible people -telling me that while I didn't follow their 3 rules (not from around these parts, don't attend a church, and I didn't attend their schools) that they wouldn't buy from me and they'd tell their friends not to buy from me. Heartbreaking.

Also, I couldn't get a loan to save my life. As a woman-own operation, all doors were shut to me.

Now I live in the PNW. The difference is night and day. 

I hope you can find solace in the people who do patronize your shop. 

Best of luck!

[BSLprints]

That printer ink costs just jumped up 30% - I mean that affects many industries but we do fine art reproduction so we go through a LOT of ink and it means quite a raw materials cost increase.

[MJD]

Inks and printers are very costly on any form of print, I'm just glad I'm able to outsource the actual printing to external companies who can do it more cost effectively than I can, but ink prices can be crazy, especially when its a pro grade printer!

[ForageCafe]

when I run payroll I want to put the same person under two different pay amounts for two different jobs and Include tip pool on one job but not the other. I want to be able to track the total hours for the same person doing two different jobs.

[surfnsuds]

I will like to have a program for deliveries attached with uber transportation

[Elias1]

Hello Sirs,

I have been using the square all along, but the challenges that I have are these:

1. Most of time, I don’t receive money into my account after transactions.

2. Sometimes, I do receive but the processing fees are different , e.i for transaction of $57.62, I receive $47…. 
is this fear?

[lakenrod]

The ability to set individual service times for individual service providers would be amazing. Currently our only issue with square.

For example... 3. barbers in the shop, all barbers do haircuts as a service. provided. Barber number 1 needs 30 minutes for a haircut service but barber number 2 needs 45 minutes to do a haircut service. 

[MMGill]

Business today is like walking through a mine field!!! The help situation is the worst I have ever seen it,  qualified people are scarce as hens teeth, most are in business themselves or are entrenched in other employment, well taken care of.. I have been running an ad for a   retail sales/manager/ computer literate/ customer orientated person for our business. It is multi faceted, custom swing shop, retail store with model trains, family oriented items, custom woodworking shop featuring exterior lawn furniture, swings etc., specialty cigars, specialty coffee, and a few other items used as a customer draw. on top of that we carry 2800 to 3000 listing on Ebay and are working on a presence in other on line media.

A large percentage of the people that applied were totally unqualified, even after reading the job description. Some had no resume, most had no references, no work history listed or glaring discrepancies in dates. More then a few eliminated themselves by the content on their Facebook page. Simple things like drug free, drivers license, no legal issues, transportation, professional appearance, strong work ethic, good time management skills  etc. seem to be unreadable and unreachable.

Yes, I am old school, at 75 and still going strong I have a right to expect the above qualifications, I have lived and maintained them for many years

I am located in the NE Georgia mountains, rural area, hard enough to find shop labor, so really hard to find quality retail/management help

Money is not the quick answer we pay top wages for the area equal to amazon, fed ex etc.

I am the eternal optimist and believe that the right person will show up and be excited about helping to take us to the next level 

[PerroneTech]

Maybe paying a manager the pay equal to an Amazon worker is why you can't find good help? Your list is quite a tall order.

[MMGill]

Pay rate for  amazon prime is well over $20 per hour in this area as I said, to a point where a 10-12  per hourwage is the rule we are way above local scale

[SMG21]

The inability to sell digital products with an auto-download feature - even if that means including a Google Drive link for instant gratification.

Thanks!

[harveyliles581]

Not really sealing products sealing my work abilities it's more of a Handyman type thing