The Paper Store promises top-notch customer service in its 100+ brick-and-mortar stores, with associates helping shoppers choose from its widely varied assortment of apparel, accessories, jewelry, water bottles and even packaged food from Stonewall Kitchen (along with paper, pens and school supplies, of course).
But a legacy point-of-sale (POS) system that lacked any kind of mobile functionality tied too many associates to cash wrap workstations — a major source of inefficiency during ongoing labor shortages in retail. In fact, the 2023 Retail TouchPoints Store Operations Survey found that among the 82% of respondents who have armed associates with mobile devices, 59% saw improved employee productivity while 50% saw improved cross-sells and upsells.
“Mobility is important because retail labor costs are still rising, so we can’t afford to put the same number of [worker] hours in the store as we used to,” said Craig Hewitt, COO of The Paper Store in an interview with Retail TouchPoints. “We’re known for a high level of customer service in our stores, but that comes with an expense, so the task for our tech team was to come up with solutions that enabled employees to do more in the same amount of time.”
That mandate was particularly urgent given The Paper Store’s brick-and-mortar growth strategy. In 2021 the retailer opened its first store outside the Northeast and now operates 13 stores in Florida, and in 2022 The Paper Store opened its first Signature Store, featuring a 12,000-square-foot footprint — double its previous stores’ average size — and new ways for customers to shop.
The retailer, which had not done a major POS upgrade since 2019, adopted a cloud-native POS solution from Jumpmind that not only unchained associates from the cash wrap but had the added benefit of being easier for them to use. Training that had taken as long as three to four hours could now be completed in 30 minutes or less.
“It’s intuitive, it’s smart, it thinks for you in the sense of asking the questions that it knows it needs to ask regarding certain tasks or systems,” said Hewitt, noting that the smartphone-style interface aligned with associates’ personal technology use. “That helped adoption, and it also just runs faster,” than The Paper Store’s previous POS system, which had required three separate logins for POS, inventory queries and ship-to-home functionality.
“None of those three systems talked to each other, so we needed training for all three,” explained Hewitt. “That’s three different passwords and user accounts in each store across the fleet. Employees simply don’t want to do this; it’s too cumbersome.”
Rapid Deployment Meets Retailer’s Needs
Not only does the Jumpmind system work fast; The Paper Store also was able to adopt it quickly. The whole project was completed in approximately nine months during 2023, with the actual deployment, including a total of 800 Apple iPad and iPhone devices, taking less than 30 days to complete.
Installing efficient mobile technology doesn’t just meet short-term employee needs. It also sends a message to The Paper Store’s current and future customers. “We’re talking to a consumer that will drive the next 10 years of our business, so at the least they would expect mobile technology [in our stores],” said Hewitt. “Old registers make people think you’re old-fashioned, so we have to stay up to date with that or they’ll forget you.”
Future Efficiency Improvements are in the Cards
The mobility offered by the new POS solution is its key benefit, but not its only one. “Having all functions in one application is extremely beneficial to us; I don’t think we’ve yet capitalized on all those labor savings yet,” said Hewitt. “For example, if a customer does a product return at the register, and then [the product] gets reintroduced into inventory — all those steps are built into the process now. Additionally, Jumpmind built an inventory management tool into the POS, so we can transfer product, receive product and do cycle counts — it’s all baked in now.”
The retailer also has tapped Jumpmind’s Promote application for managing deals and promotions. Previously, promo solutions had been siloed, with some in the legacy POS and others in a merchandising solution. “That limited us in some of the promotional combinations [we wanted to do],” said Hewitt. “Now there’s one tool to do all of our promotions across the field.” And while the Paper Store hasn’t yet tied the Promote application into its ecommerce operations, “that’s a project for 2025” when the retailer plans to replatform its site, he added.
The Paper Store, which emerged from a brief bankruptcy in September 2020 when it was purchased by real estate firm WS Development, also is working with Jumpmind to create an intuitive, mobile-enabled inventory management system, with all core functionalities embedded in one solution.
“We had wanted to partner with someone that was growing their tech and wanted input from early adopters,” said Hewitt about the decision to select Jumpmind. “We also needed a partner who would listen to our needs and adapt to our business operations with the technology. We’re a small organization that’s family-owned and run, so it was critical that [we knew] they were listening to us.”