If you are looking for a point of sale (POS) system for your video game store, hobby shop, game store, or toy store, you have come to the right place.
This article will focus on the features that you need specific to your game, hobby, or toy store, if you want to learn more about general retail pos system features, check out our more comprehensive retail pos buying guide.
In this guide, we we will cover:
A game store, or toy store point of sale system is a retail POS that supports features or integrations that are key to the unique checkout processes that toy and game shop retailers need to run their operations as smoothly as possible.
In short, it is a POS system that is built for game and toy retailers.
Whether your store is selling the newest Resident Evil video game, or a Cards Against Humanity expansion pack, or any other popular toy or game that might not be suited for all ages. It should not be up to your staff to always keep an eye out for the dreaded M for Mature rating.
That is why having a POS system that can track your items ERSB or PEGI ratings and flag age inappropriate content to your cashier right at the checkout are super important for game and toy retailers. Nobody wants an angry parent showing up at their store asking why did you sell this to my 10 year old child? and this feature is a must to prevent that from happening.
Ask your POS service provider if they are able to support ERSB (North America) or PEGI (Europe) ratings, or if at the very least they can keep track of them in product notes. You might be glad you did.
Most toy store and game store owners love when a hit product is set to hit the shelves. Whether it is a limited edition Star Wars Lego release, the next Nintendo, Playstation, or Xbox Console, or any other eagerly awaited product, it is great to have customers calling, emailing, texting, or lining up outside your store to be one of the first to get their hands on one.
Accepting pre-orders for games, video games, and more is therefore a must for most toy and game sellers. You want to make sure you can take a deposit easily, notify customers when their items arrive, and be able to deliver these items on the date that you promised. Of course, all this is very difficult to do if you are trying to track your pre-orders with pen and paper, or an excel sheet.
Avoid the hassle, find a POS software that handles the pre-order process for you, one that tracks orders, deposits held, outstanding balance remaining, expected delivery date, and more.
There is no sense taking pre-orders from customers without being confident you can deliver the requested item on time, and that you can get enough items from your supplier to meet demand. This is where having the ability to order from suppliers, as well as pre-order from suppliers, directly from your POS is something game and toy stores love.
Whether your supplier is Hasbro for action figures, Fisher Price for toys, or Ubisoft for the next Far Cry video game, you want to be able to easily secure inventory from the manufacturer or wholesaler before demand starts to spike.
The right POS system can allow your game store to pre-order or back-order games, so that the next time the manufacturer sends out a shipment, some of those toys or games are headed your way.
If you are a game or toy retailer in 2022, and you are not connecting your store to Google Shopping or Amazon to drive more sales, you might be missing out on a lot of revenue.
Pre-Orders are for when you have more demand than you can serve, but what if your city or town does not have enough demand and you have too much stock sitting on your shelf? Or worse, what if potential customers just do not know you sell those items.
Some POS systems integrate directly with Google Shopping, which allows toy and game retailers to list their items on Google for free (or at a very low cost). With Google Shopping, you can choose whether you can drive customers to your store by not offering online sales, or whether you want to make it convenient and offer customers both options.
For Amazon and eBay, the costs to list your items may be higher, but if you have an item that is hard to come by like a sold out video game, or a limited edition toy, you might actually make more money by allowing people to compete for your items.
Having a POS that easily allows for Amazon, Google Shopping, or eBay selling, is therefore a must for certain inventory you carry.
If you plan to buy back and resell used video games, or you purchase retro or vintage action figures for resale, you might be surprised to find that a lot of standard POS systems do not offer this capability. The reason for this is they often cannot track items that are out of box (no SKUs), or just cannot track condition, or resale amounts.
If you want to operate your business in such a way that allows for buybacks and resales, you need to ask about this when buying your POS.
In the late 90s, a trend emerged in the trading card industry, with professional grading services like the Professional Sports Authenticators (PSA), Beckett Grading Services (BGS), and Sportscard Guaranty (SGC), ranking memorabilia based on its overall condition on a scale between 1 and 10.
Basically what this meant was a trading card with damaged corners and bubble gum stains would be ranked 1, and a mint condition trading card would be ranked 10, with the latter being worth far more than the former.
These grading services eventually moved on to grade all types of collectables, from video games and action figures, to pokemon and board games. Since they are very important for buyers to know the condition, and for sellers to know selling price, you will want to make sure your POS has the ability to put notes on each individual product in a product information field.
If you sell any type of graded toy, trading card, etc., you will want this feature.
One of the most common requests we see from game stores and toy stores is the ability to offer gift cards as part of their sales system. Grandma or Grandpa, often like to treat their grandkids with toys or games for a special occasion and one of the easiest ways they can do this is through a gift card.
Gift cards allow kids to choose whatever they want in the store, rather than relying on the gift giver to know what they want. Not surprisingly they are extremely popular amongst game store retailers and their customers alike.
Few POS systems offer gift cards standard, but many offer an integration easily with a 3rd party company. If you want to sell more, we would highly recommend offering your customers gift cards, and finding a POS that supports that feature.
Find a POS system that allows you to sell online, whether it is for in store pickup, curbside pickup, or standard ecommerce to anywhere in the world, you can save a lot of money and manage your inventory in one place with a POS system that offers online and offline selling for your game store.
Your game store may not only need to keep track of what is in stock, but also other information like individual item condition, item grading, publication date, manufacturer, age rating, and more. Therefore it is important that you find a POS that allows these custom fields to be added on the product or item level.
Look for a POS that allows for custom details alongside its robust inventory management.
Toy and game stores thrive when they delight their customers. What better way to keep your customers happy then by offering letting them know about new game and toy releases, new items in stock similar to what they have purchased before, or simply by giving them a discount on their birthday or holidays.
Consider finding a POS that has robust CRM (customer relationship management) features so that all aspects of your business (marketing, sales, ecom, and promotions) can be handled in one place.
If you offer unique or hard to find items, from that graded Tom Brady rookie card, to the latest video game that seems to sell out everywhere, the right POS system can get your more sales by putting your items or toys in front of the right buyers. Integrating with Google Shopping, Amazon, eBay, and more will definitely help you get items flying off the shelf and is one big benefit of a good pos software system.
On top of this, features like gift cards, and ecommerce functionality can give you even more ways to sell, which hopefully means more sales being processed by you and your point of sale.
A game or toy store POS system is ideal for:
