In October, many of the best retailers in the nation will gather in Canton Ohio for the Smyth Retail Systems Client Conference. Come learn from other non-competitive retailers, industry experts, and share your ideas for making Merchant Plus even better!
Details will follow, but we have scheduled the event for Monday to Wednesday, October 17th – 19th (8:00 – 5:00pm daily but we will wrap up by 3:00pm on Wednesday to allow for flight connections). We will be hosting this event at the newly remodeled Holiday Inn, Beldon Village – if you’ve been here before you won’t believe it now! Book directly at the hotel (330-494-2770) and mention “Smyth Retail” for special savings on the rooms. They offer free shuttle service to the Akron Canton Airport (CAK). Alternative airports include Cleveland (CLE), an hour away, or Pittsburgh (PIT), two hours away.
Big Announcement!
Come see how Mobile Merchant+ will allow you to stay in touch with your customers no matter where you are!
As is our custom, we will review all the major enhancements and improvements (in versions 5.1 through 5.2, which will be released later this summer) as we review each module. As always, user suggestions are encouraged as these conferences always help us better understand our clients’ needs and lead to future improvements. The educational opportunity shouldn’t be missed and we encourage you to send as many people as you can afford to have out of the store. Besides, Autumn is beautiful in Ohio!
A lot has transpired since we last met. We have a lot of new topics to review:
- Mobile Merchant +
- Loyalty Program
- RDi eCommerce integration & Enhancements
- EMV/Mobile Processing
- QIR & Security
- Returns Management
- New R2S Integration
- Customer Marketing expansions
- Inventory Adjustment Entry
- New FDIC Statement Regulations
- Receiving Improvements
- New Dashboard
- Postal Code Lookup
- Style Maintenance/Inquiry
In addition to our staff, we’ve lined up a team of industry professionals to contribute to our meeting and share their knowledge with the group.
Danny Paul, Danny Paul Consulting – Keynote Speaker
Danny Paul has owned his own retail stores and has helped retailers in many ways over the last 40 years. He has worked with retailers doing as little as 400K annually to those generating hundreds of millions. He held the position of President CEO of RMSA for fifteen years. RMSA was the largest forecasting and merchandising company in America serving over 5,000 independent specialty apparel retailers. RMSA provided OTB and planning services. Twelve years ago Danny Paul founded Retail Communities, peer groups that are comprised of 10 to 12 like type stores from all over the country that meet twice each year to discuss, examine and adjust every detail about their business. In addition to his involvement with peer groups, he does OTB planning for retailers in every region of the country. He is often called upon by key industry publications to author articles for the retail industry and we are excited that he will be on hand to share his expertise with our clients.
Gene Spainhour & Kevin Smith, R2S Financial
Gene Spainhour and Kevin Smith bring to R2S a combined experience of over 50 years in retail, retail systems and accounting, and credit management. They fully understand both the financial opportunities and the frustrations that independent business owners face daily. Since 1992, R2S has been providing private label credit and 3rd party billing to specialty retailers throughout the United States. They have been a wonderful partner for many years and are widely appreciated by our clients for excelling at personalized service merchants can’t find elsewhere.
Kurt Beeken & Paul Duncan, Retail Dimensions
RDi founders Paul Duncan and Kurt Beeken are well respected experts in omni-channel marketing and specialize in specialty store eCommerce solutions. Their expertise is valued by those just considering eCommerce to those with the most advanced requirements. With over 750 integration clients today, RDi is an eCommerce advisor to a wide range of specialty retailers. The company’s proven technical and market expertise simplifies the challenges of eCommerce and integration. By delivering new ways to connect retail businesses to more channels, RDi ultimately accelerates retail sales through POS and eCommerce software solutions.
Nick Hughes, Vantiv Integrated Payments/Mercury Payments
Vantiv Integrated Payments works with thousands of resellers and developers to offer small and medium size businesses a comprehensive portfolio of integrated payment products and services that help control costs and increase revenue. By partnering with technology providers, they deliver payment processing technology to local merchants that is fast, secure, reliable, and affordable.
Nick is our ever vigilant partner at Mercury Payment Systems and has been invaluable in helping us navigate the conversion to EMV processing and always at hand to escalate issues and get quick results when servicing our clients. While not the only option, they been a great partner for processing credit cards. Their rates are more than competitive but the service levels are what most of our clients appreciate the most. Real time balancing and reconciliation tools are provided for Bank Deposit Entry. Proactive and automated alerts can be established to warn the retailer of exceptional activity.
Join us!
Every time we gather for this conference the reviews are overwhelming! This is a great educational opportunity for all your staff and we encourage you to send as many folks as you can. As always, we are looking forward to learning from all our clients how we can improve the system.
Contact Steve Geiger if you are interested – he’ll do anything he can to help get you here!
