[jonah]

This seemed very familiar to me. I remembered seeing Square offering a POS kit[0] just this spring. Interestingly though, they no longer sell it and instead are only offering a (very slick) stand/reader[1].

I wonder why they stopped offering the whole kit. My only guess it was a MVP style trial balloon offering to gauge interest before building their own hardware. Or, it didn't fly, which may not bode well for Shopify either.

[0] http://appleinsider.com/articles/13/02/20/square-launches-ip...

[1] https://squareup.com/register/hardware

[schappim]

As someone who runs a pretty big shopify store (in terms of SKUs) littlebirdelectronics.com, this makes it super easy for us to move from being an online store to a brick and mortar store.

In the past we've tried to sell our wares at Makerfaires and the like, and in the end we'd be getting people to use our laptop or iPad and place their orders through our site.

This dramatically simplifies the whole affair!

Credit where credit is due, this is pretty awesome :)

[jonah]

For sure, no discounting the usefulness of a seamlessly integrated solution for people with both online and b&m businesses.

I haven't had the need to dig into Shopify in years but will be curious to see how it handles some of the complexities of multi-front retail.

[jmcdonald-ut]

The one key advantage that Shopify has, as I see it, is that merchants who use Shopify already have their inventory loaded into the system. Synchronizing their online stock and physical stock now has little barrier to entry beyond the cost.

[jonah]

How does Shopify do with multiple locations for stock? Say you have inventory in your physical store and then have the inventory you're selling online at a warehouse elsewhere which you also use to re-stock the b&m.

[jmcdonald-ut]

That's a great question that I don't have the answer to. I have done some development work for a Shopify site recently. As I recall Shopify's default inventory system would likely be limited for a company with multiple locations.