Crafty Yankee

Shortly after the acquisition, she recognized the need to put in a computer system. Initially, she opened a couple satellite stores and networked computers so she could be away from the store—perhaps enjoy a vacation—and still be in touch remotely.

Business was growing but Fields eventually realized she needed to consolidate her business into one location and, to be successful, have a thorough understanding of which merchandise was selling and when it was bought.

Knowing those sales trends would give her a concrete understanding of what was going on in her business so she could offer popular products and streamline inventory.

Crafty Yankee found Retail Pro’s analytical capabilities exceptionally valuable in accomplishing this end. “By having good computer information, I can constantly reshape the store,” said Fields. “We must change with the customer: Patterns, age, tastes.”

Retail Pro 9 gave Fields tools to analyze Crafty Yankee’s $1 million business by key segments. The store has been using Retail Pro 9 since 2012 and Fields credits the software with contributing to the store’s consistent, healthy growth despite a stagnant overall economy.

Knowing what sells—and what doesn’t—is critical to every retailer and Crafty Yankee adopted an analytical method with Retail Pro. No guesswork here: “I like to analyze my business in lots of different segments. It’s important to me to start from the top.”

Fields continued, “Let’s say we had a 20% increase last month. Where did that come from? Jewelry? Glass? Pottery? Once I see the trend in the data, I can break it down by vendor or resources. And I can compare that data to last year’s.”

None of that could have happened if Crafty Yankee had remained with its original retail management platform, CraftShop, which she started using in 1995. Much of the data was difficult to extract and it required quite a bit of manual work.

“What I liked from the beginning with Retail Pro was that they saw what I had with the CraftShop system. It was pretty complicated,” said Fields. Realizing she needed a more robust system, she started researching other software solutions, finally determining that Retail Pro was the best fit for her needs.

“I have thousands of items and people would tell me, ‘You’re going to have to re-enter all that information.’ And I said, ‘I don’t think so!’”