Top 5 Takeaways From The 2018 SHOT Show
As a preferred retail software provider for the NSSF for over 13 years, Celerant Technology continues to educate and help firearm dealers become more successful.
“We thank the NSSF, Sports South and RSR for giving us the opportunity to participate and educate their dealers on how to improve their retail businesses”, stated Michele Salerno, Director of Marketing, Assistant VP at Celerant Technology. “The NSSF once again showcased Celerant at SHOT University, an educational day before The SHOT Show, where we discussed how firearm dealers can more effectively operate every aspect of their business through a single retail software platform. During the show, we displayed our latest firearm point of sale system, Cumulus Retail, in the ‘New Product Showcase’, and both Sports South and RSR invited us to participate within their booths to demonstrate our vendor integrations”
This year, the NSSF celebrated its 40th SHOT Show (Shooting, Hunting & Outdoor Trade Show) with over 60,000 industry professionals in attendance. As the largest trade show of its kind, The SHOT Show attracts attendees from 100 countries to learn about new and innovative products from over 1,650 outdoor/sporting/hunting industry exhibitors.
This was Celerant’s 14th SHOT Show, where we showcased our innovative retail software that empowers firearm dealers to more effectively operate their stores, gun range and online sales. For over 18 years, Celerant has developed cutting-edge retail and Point of Sale (POS) software, and has been a preferred provider for both the NSSF (National Shooting Sports Foundation) and the NRA (National Rifle Association) for the past 13 years. Each year at the SHOT Show, we proudly display our latest retail integrations and software functionality to help firearm dealers increase sales, save time and automate their business.
Top 5 Takeaways from The SHOT Show:
- Acquire Retail Software That Meets Your Needs and Budget
Retail Software Firearm dealers have come to recognize our Celerant name and our premier retail and POS software, Stratus Retail. Over the years, we have discovered that while many of the dealers we meet in the industry have a need or a desire for our advanced retail software, they might not have the internal resources at their store or the budget to support an enterprise retail software. This year, we introduced our new, affordable SaaS point of sale, range management and E-Commerce solution- Cumulus Retail. Designed as the entry-system to our premier retail system, firearm retailers can start small and at a lower price point. With cost effective, monthly ‘software as a service’ (SaaS) payments, and little-to-no money upfront, dealers can manage their gun store, e4473 and Smartwaiver integrations, electronic A&D (acquisition and disposition) books, range reservations, memberships, class/course scheduling, online sales including their own E-Commerce and marketplace integrations (GunBroker, SlickGuns, etc.), online range reservations and much more.
- Automate Purchase Orders To Your Distributors
Dealers don’t order from only one distributor- there are typically multiple distributors and so replenishing inventory can be a challenge. Through our software platforms, both Cumulus Retail and Stratus Retail, we enable our clients to better leverage their distributors and take advantage of the massive resources made available to them. By automating your purchase orders to your distributors, based on minimum and maximum inventory levels pre-set within our inventory software, you can save time, eliminate manual entry, and most importantly get the right inventory exactly when you need it. Dealers can achieve ‘Just in Time’ inventory and automatically replenish their products exactly when they need it, eliminating excess dead or slow moving inventory or out-of-stocks. Our software allows retailers to even prioritize their distributors, and by receiving automated acknowledgments back from the distributor, our system will continue sending purchase order’s out to the next distributor until their entire order can be fulfilled- and the entire process is automated!
- Drop Shipping Is The Way Of The Future
Celerant is partnered with leading distributors in the firearm industry, including Sports South, RSR Group, Zander’s, AcuSport and more, allowing dealers to pull available inventory levels onto their website, directly from the distributors- pulling the product, descriptions, product images (in some case 360 degree images), and more. This integration allows outdoor retailers to sell many more products, or wider product-lines, on their websites- basically anything that their distributor carries in their warehouse. Celerant’s software then sends the retailer’s online orders directly to the distributor to fulfill and drop ship on their behalf. By leveraging this innovative technology, the retailer is able to sell many more products without ever stocking the merchandise or fulfilling the orders.
- Email Marketing Is The Most Cost-Effective Way To Promote Your Business
But what if you could send the right promotional message, at the right time, to the right customer, based specifically on their individual purchase history and prior preferences? By using our automated personalized email marketing, firearm dealers can continuously market to their customers with little ongoing effort, once the initial workflows are set up within our software. As customers are becoming more and more tech savvy and continuously using their smartphones more than their desktop computers, it becomes even more important for dealers to send emails that automatically resize based on device viewed from. And with customers getting more and more emails everyday- the best way to get your customers to open your email is to integrate the messages you send with their personal customer data from within your CRM in your retail software.
- Increase Exposure and Sales Through 3rd-Party Marketplaces (Gunbroker, Slickguns, Amazon)
If you can’t beat them, join them. By selling your products on popular marketplace’s, such as GunBroker.com, Slickguns.com or Amazon.com, dealers can sell more products and leverage the marketplace’s extensive marketing and market share. With the right point of sale (POS) retail software, this process can be integrated so that your products can be easily pushed with a few clicks within your retail software to the marketplace. And then your incoming orders can flow into your POS software as if they are coming in from your own E-Commerce website. By automating this process, dealers can save time and reduce errors associated with any manual product and/or order entry.
