Seattle based CrystalCommerce is offering a pre-loaded inventory management system designed specifically for hobby game retailers. The system includes sales information on board games, card games, CCG’s, RPG’s, and miniatures built in.
ICv2 had an opportunity to chat with Anthony Gallela of CrystalCommerce at the recent Gen Con game fair. He gave us details on the new system.
The software allows the retailer to access CrystalCommerce’s on-line database of game products. This database is regularly updated through a combination of data manually updated by the staff and internet data collection, as well as crowd-sourced data collected from CrystalCommerce’s retail members. As information about new products from major publishers becomes available, it is automatically updated into the database so it is available to retailers using the program.
“We have all the data already in there,” Gallela explained, “We have over 300,000 products, we’ve got the photos, we’ve got the rarities if you’re selling singles, sets, etc. So you don’t have to input anything other than the price you want to sell things for and the quantity you have to sell.”
There is a $500 set up charge, but once installed there is a $50 monthly fee (the set up charge was reduced to $250 during Gen Con). If a retailer chooses to use the system to post to a website or a storefront on eBay or Amazon.com, CrystalCommerce charges a 2.5% transaction fee on Website sales. The transaction fee is reduced to 1.5% for sales on eBay or Amazon.com.
CrystalCommerce retains possession of the database, allowing them to update it directly, without requiring retailers to maintain the database themselves.
The POS is designed to support all normal sales functions, including UPC data, receipt printing, and credit card processing.
