Guenther Poellabauer / photo: TAC

TAC’s digital signage, self-service machines and touch POS (point of sale) contribute significantly to increased sales opportunities within a spa environment. In-house marketing with digital signage allows direct communication of services/products in a targeted way via strategically positioned screens, and special offers can be advertised via a webshop. Vending machines enable guests to buy tickets and drinks independently, and with TAC machines, towels are always provided.

Payment information is securely encrypted using reliable technology. Once credit card information is kept, it is automatically converted into a token and stored.

Whether at checkouts, in the webshop or at vending machines, the TAC Pay integrated payment interface ensures that one-time and recurring payments, and refunds are processed easily, quickly and securely through the TAC software.

TAC’s stock module supports inventories, supplier, and order management. If minimum stock levels are reached, items appear in order proposals. In inventory management, goods movements are also considered that have not come about through normal business, such as breakage, theft or returns.

Sal Capizzi / photo: Book4Time

Book4Time has added a retail ‘shopping cart’ feature which allows both practitioners and desk staff to hold suggestive retail items to a client’s ticket without affecting the transaction. If the client decides they want to purchase these items they can be moved to ‘purchase’ with the click of a button. It also operates as a standalone ‘point of sale’ system for retail boutiques within a spa property.

Regarding the checkout process, the system is able to save payment details with the latest GDPR secure technology – allowing clients to checkout both service and retail items seamlessly through Book4Time Pay. In addition, contactless payment solutions, including 15-plus interfaces with prominent, international credit card merchants, is also available.

Book4Time sales reports track sales and break them down by vendor, product type and line, so spa managers can run specific reports that show how much retail specific revenue has been sold by each team member. Spending reports also offer insights on which retail products sell well and which items could be an area of opportunity.

Oliver Cahill / photo: premier

Core, by Premier Software, makes upselling simple and intuitive so operators can use retail allocation and recommended product features, both of which prompt staff to sell products at the point of billing after their spa experience. While retail allocation triggers the sale of products associated with the treatment booked, recommended products are based on personal recommendations from the staff member. These can be noted on the client’s record card and flagged on departure.

Core integrates with Premier’s online-booking platform, onejourney, to provide a unified, tailored shopping experience. Complete with revenue generating features and one basket for booking online, onejourney also links Apple Pay and digital wallets to the client’s account and all client purchases are stored on an individual record.

Core’s reporting feature assists the spa manager in monitoring a range of information, which includes the number of retail products sold, and by whom, to facilitate rewards with commission and track best sellers. By setting a minimum product level, the system offers a prompt when an item falls below this threshold and needs reordering. Core can also be set up to create order forms, accept deliveries and transfer stock between sites.

Daniel Griswold / photo: Agilsys

Agilysys Spa offers an integrated booking engine and membership portal, which allows operators and guests to create profiles to store their personal information and view previous and future bookings together with all retail transactions. The software also allows for secured storage of payment details. This single guest itinerary offers spa staff an insight into a guest’s activities across the property, which provide them with the necessary data to recommend products that compliment a guest’s lifestyle and past purchases.

Agilysys Spa Retail and Inventory systems work together to provide accurate tracking of inventory items. This robust reporting system has the capability to create reports on guest spend, popular retail items, commissions, and other sales-driven metrics. The inventory module allows managers to track retail items, manage quotes, create purchase orders, and issue receipts related to ordered merchandise.

With the same information, staff can use Agilysys Digital Marketing to send targeted email promotions that are product specific, or only available to loyal/high-profit guests.

Matt Lerner / photo: Mindbody

Booker, by Mindbody, simplifies the sale of products and services. The integrated POS allows staff to finalise a sale anywhere within a spa and wellness facility — so they can add retail products to services provided at their individual stations, or at the checkout counter.

Booker also makes it easy to offer discounts and special offers — creating new and personalised opportunities for in-house retail sales.

The system allows operators to store up to three credit cards within a customer’s profile to enable quick pay for future purchases and staff can easily select whichever card the client requests when completing a purchase in-store. When checking out through online booking, clients can even choose a standard tip percentage that will be automatically applied to their future appointments, and they can also manage their own payment information.

Booker’s inventory tracking also makes it easy for spa and wellness facilities to manage their product inventory by allowing them to oversee and optimise their inventory, based on buying trends, so they order the right number of products to meet their customers’ demands.

Jasmine Hurst / photo: spasoft

SpaSoft not only tracks, sells, and reports on all products within a spa business it also offers features such as Product Recommendations and Promotional Products to make selling easy for the spa team.

With Product Recommendations, therapists can recommend products to guests and track them within their profile so they can purchase at POS. Promotional Products can optimise retail sales and assist spas in getting creative when promoting products, whether it’s bundling with services, offering BOGOs (buy one get one free) or by offering discounts.

Spa operators can also find out what their inventory is worth by using purchase orders to track and report on quantity and cost of retail products. SpaSoft can then supply products to multiple outlets, keeping the revenue segmented for inventory tracking and revenue reporting. In addition, spas can set up their cost price calculation the way they want, either FIFO (first in first out) or average weighted.

SpaSoft’s reporting mechanism allows operators to make data-driven decisions. By leveraging reports such as top selling products, slow moving products and retail sales analyses, they can identify purchasing trends by vendor, product, or group segmentation.

Ricky Daniels / photo: TryBe

With Trybe, operators can tailormake the customer journey when going through an online booking. This means there is ample opportunity to upsell and push sales at the click of a button. For example, the option to add a glass of bubbly on arrival or upgrade to an afternoon tea can be included, allowing the customer to make these decisions without a salesperson present.

Allowing for a smooth journey and customer loyalty, customers can opt to have their card details saved, which makes the checkout process easier and these are automatically updated when they expire. The checkout also supports mobile wallets such as Apple Pay and Google Pay to ensure frictionless purchases.

For stock reordering, Trybe software continually monitors stock levels and converts the data into reports. The reordering option ensures operators know their stock levels are taken care of and orders for minimum order quantities can be raised once items fall below order levels.

To help make target marketing easier, the system is able to remember the guest and what they have previously bought, through the Trybe system’s customer profiles area.

Charity Hudnall / photo: Vagaro

The Vagaro system imports product inventory to an account for free so spa operators can easily manage in-house products in one place. The software allows the creation of product bundles to help pair top-selling items with less popular products to increase sales and revenue. For seamless upselling integration with spa services, a physical inventory can be easily added to a customer’s checkout process on the platform by simply scanning the product bar code.

Vagaro allows both businesses and customers to save payment details on file for future and repeat purchases, which allows businesses to charge the payment method on file at checkout, while customers can autofill saved information for a simpler checkout process.

Bloom Healing Botanical Spa found Vagaro when they were looking for easy-to-use, scalable software. One of their best-selling signature products is their skin care line, a collection of healing botanicals they create and bottle in-house. Vagaro’s inventory feature helped to optimise sales because it helped them keep track of all products, including the ingredients they needed to order from their formulator to create the top-selling botanicals.

Sudheer Koneru / photo: Zenoti

Zenoti software helps to boost retail sales by giving automated product suggestions to spa and wellness providers – based on stored guest data regarding their preferences and spending habits. Providers see these personalised recommendations via a mobile device during the visit, making it easy for them to highlight products and upsell their tickets.

The all-in-one software tracks product inventory data, helping spas to manage costs and empower businesses to increase their retail revenue. Using real-time data and business analytics, spa operators can make timely stock management decisions with live inventory insights that automatically detects when it’s time to restock a product. The system also generates pre-filled purchase orders for suppliers and can segment the data by property location.

Zenoti also offers personalised marketing. With behaviour-based campaigns, micro-segmentation, and AI-powered advertising, the Zenoti platform identifies specific audience segments based on their previous activity and preferences.

As part of their switch to Zenoti, the Citrus Salon in California integrated retail products into their online experience so new and returning guests could buy products online, explore service options and book appointments. In one year, their retail sales doubled and online appointment bookings increased by 39 per cent.