Subscription Box/Item
under review
B
Ben
There is a current trend in subscription purchases. Whether it is a box of random items or an item that is perhaps consumable and needed on a recurring basis (i.e. food supplements, pet food etc).
We have for many years wanted customers to sign up to a subscription for items such as horse supplements, pet wormers, pet food etc.
Benefits of subscribed purchases:
- Forecasting of inventory made easier.
- Securing customer loyalty and repeat business
- Less need to discount to gain the repeat business
- Easier to plan goods out demand.
I understand this is a complex development but think there is huge opportunity here.
Here is a recent article about it: https://www.retailgazette.co.uk/blog/2020/08/is-subscription-based-retail-the-future-of-shopping/
Here is an integration from another platform that goes in to detail about the functionality: https://apps.shopify.com/recurring-orders
Neil McQuillan
Merged in a post:
Subscriptions
T
Tabitha
Our last website offered subscriptions which many of our customers used for dog food - great for the customer, and promotes retailer loyalty. Is this something you will look into? EKM have this function.
Neil McQuillan
Ben Ben Kippax Its a great idea this one.
Two challenges I see. The first is how do we deal with items which are not available for backorder but out of stock. e.g. At the point the repeat order comes in the item has sold thru.
The second is payments we'd need to tokenise the card to charge the recurring fee, that's possible but complex.
The creation and download of a scheduled order would not be that complex.
Neil McQuillan
Actually how the customer builds the order might be quite complex unless its a fixed offering, I can see that being something of a nightmare.
That Bold Subscriptions offering is effectively a complete platform which uses the Shopify payment gateway from the look of it.
B
Ben
Neil McQuillan: Agreed that it is complex, I almost didn't raise it for this reason, but I can see huge potential so would be keen to keep this discussion open if you thought there was a glimmer of hope.
- Stock Issues// I guess this would be down to the retailer to manage and to make sure they are for the most part only offering this service on items they can fulfil. I know with us that there are many lines that would suit this that will almost never run out of stock with the supplier.
- Payments // I assumed with this that there may be a company you could integrate with that already handles this sort of feature.
Perhaps there is potential in working with a platform like Bold Subscriptions that integrates with Cloud MT's SKU's to create an order?
With regards to "how the customer builds the order", we could offer the subscription either on the product page or basket page. I understand building an order of multiple items is more complicated but if the customer could do it on the basket page then perhaps they could tick the items highlighted as subscription enabled to make in to a subscription bundle which is then triggered by a separate "Subscription Checkout".
I also really like the idea of using this in fashion where a customer chooses their size, preferred colours, style etc and we send them an outfit X amount of times a year.
Ben Kippax
under review
Ben Kippax
Hey Ben,
I've been
personally
interested in this for a while now and, from my point of view, it would be exciting to see how a feature like this would be used by our customers.To implement something like this into our current ecosystem would be a large (understatement) task, involving a considerable amount of both the Cloud POS and Ecommerce development teams' time to get right. Additionally is the consideration of payment security; finding a
supportable
provider which can process recurring payments securely and communicate effectively with our ecosystem. With that in mind; it's not something I can say we're able to provide right now. Unfortunately, it just doesn't fit into our road-map ... but I will discuss it with the team.
I would like to see who else is interested in a feature like this.
Please make sure you up-vote and comment if you like this idea