Stay with Shopify, or….?

Pardon me while I think out loud for a thousand words or so.

The ecommerce platform I use for HaldeCraft is Shopify. I started with Etsy in 2010 and quickly moved to Shopify in 2012 (you can somewhat read about that here). Earlier this year they sent out an email that I didn’t have time/brain power to deal with when I read it, so I put it off until I did. I guess July is the month to deal with it because it’s almost all I’ve been able to think about for a couple of weeks now.

Shopify started out as an online retailer but as times have changed they’re leaning more and more into in-person/brick and mortar store sales. Some of this has really benefitted me, like being able to use the POS Go. The POS Go is a handheld scanner, register system, card swipe/tap-to-pay credit card reader. At home before a show, I print out bar code labels that correspond to inventory on my website, scan it at shows with the POS Go, tally receipts that can be either “check out as guest” or will assign the sale to a customer who has an account on my shop (so they can track what they’ve bought if they don’t want me to email a receipt), and run their credit cards (or tell the POS Go that they’re paying cash, and do the usual with my cash box).

I really hesitated to buy it; it was $429 and I knew I would only be using it a few times a year. But I bit the proverbial bullet because it was going to do a lot for me – being able to sync inventory was a REAL check mark in the Plus column – and I bought it… in March of 2023. Previously I’d been using their chip reader/swiper, and hand writing receipts and totaling them up by hand, taking inventory out of stock online before the show and re-entering anything that didn’t sell back in after. I had moved to their reader from Square, in 2019. So, three years for them to phase out the reader/swiper and move to the POS Go… and then three years for them to phase out the POS Go and move onto something else.

That’s right, they’re phasing out the POS Go and moving to something called the “Victa Mobile.” It’s $449 and does… exactly everything the POS Go does now.

OK, they’re not PHASING OUT the POS Go, but they’re bricking most of it’s functionality and after May of next year it will only be able to be used as a credit card reader/tap-to-pay unit. I have too many choices about what to do about this.

• I can buy the new $449 unit, absolutely not trusting Shopify AT ALL to not phase it out in three years like they’ve done with the last two things (fool me twice, and all that)
• I can use my current POS Go as a card reader, and go back to hand writing and hand totaling receipts, taking inventory offline before the show and putting anything that doesn’t sell back online after the show (or just have completely different online and show inventories)
• I can use my current POS Go as a card reader, and run the Shopify software on a tablet, without buying a separate bar code scanner and instead typing in by hand onto the tablet what people are buying, and hope that using my phone as a hotspot will cover the POS Go card reader and the scanner (keeping my phone plugged into a battery bank because it starts losing power the second I wake up in the morning)
• I can use my current POS Go as a card reader, and run the Shopify software on a tablet, and also buy a new bar code scanner (they happen to sell four different ones that run in price from $209 to $299) and use three things to do the one thing my unitasker does now (oh, and hoping that using my phone as a hotspot will cover all that) and also hoping that the scanner I get will be compatible with the tablet via Bluetooth or with a corded connection… except that if it’s a wired bar code scanner, I won’t be able to keep my tablet plugged into a battery bank because the tablet I’d have to use only has one port.
• I can download and use their Tap to Pay on Android program, and with the Shopify app on my phone be almost like I am now, but without being able to scan bar codes, so I’d have to type in whatever people are buying, manually (and if their card wasn’t tap to pay eligible, they’d have to pay cash). My phone would also be in constant movement during a show, and I’d be unable to take it with me and would have to leave it in my booth with my Booth Babe if I had to step away, so they’d be unable to call me if there’s an emergency while I’m in line or something
• I can stop doing craft shows and only sell online
• I can switch online shop hosts and move to something with a simpler system for selling occasionally at craft shows

I know what I should do, and what I would like to do, and what I’ll probably do (I hate that all three of those things are different choices from the list above) but this post is already getting long enough, so my next post will be more about those three choices and how I feel about them.

Ugh. Work at home, y’all! Live the dream!