A new point-of-sale system coming out of Green Bay aims to change the game for small and mobile retailers, using nothing but a smart phone.
Expected to hit the market in October, StickerPrice is a mobile app that can be used to complete transactions, track sales data and manage inventory. Sellers – such as farmers, craft makers, boutiques, estate sale operators, and the like – mark their assortment with custom designed QR code stickers. At checkout, they scan the items into the app and process payments via credit card or electronic platforms like Venmo, Apple Pay and PayPal.
“Imagine a place like Door County, where there’s all these shops that are here today, gone tomorrow – they don’t have a whole lot of money to invest in a system that’s expensive and has a lot of components,” said co-founder Jeff Minzlaff. “What we’re trying to be is that one-stop solution, where you can do everything simply on your phone.”
Minzlaff and founding partner Garrett Moody have spent the past three years building what started as an idea for a rummage sale management system, while balancing full-time jobs at Green Bay-based Schreiber Foods Inc.
Minzlaff and his wife’s first rummage sale had been a headache. Long lines of customers with armfuls of home goods were no match for their pen-and-paper checkout method.
Determined to find a better way, Minzlaff, a graphic designer, brought the idea to Moody, a software developer. The two had been working together on a different project at the time, but this one had greater potential.
“After we started developing these ideas, we realized a lot of small businesses could use this same exact technology,” said Moody.
From there, they pitched a prototype to Titletown Tech, the $25 million venture capital fund led by the Green Bay Packers and Microsoft. Today, StickerPrice is one of 20 companies in Titletown Tech’s portfolio. The partnership includes startup money and access to an advisor, who encouraged them to save their capital and write their own code, even if it took longer to get to market.
But more time has allowed the startup to track shifts in consumer behavior and implement real-time adjustments, such as purely contactless payments. And based on the spike in entrepreneurship following the 2008 market crash, said Moody, StickerPrice is arriving right on time.
“What we’re thinking is people are going to start their own businesses. They got laid off and they have a special hobby or craft that they want to turn into a small business,” he said. “This is going to be the time to introduce something that will help those super small businesses do that.”
