Sparkstone Article Archive

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How important is SEO for businesses and especially retailers?

Retailers are constantly battling it out in order to be the main contender in their sector and reaching number 1 in the search engine rankings is the latest round in that battle. Getting a high page ranking for any chosen keyword is not an easy task, especially as the more simple keywords like “clothing” or “fashion” will either be taken or extremely expensive to secure. It’s more impor

ITV’s breakfast show Lorraine has just announced it’s best online retailer in their high street fashion awards.

Google Chrome has just reached an historic landmark in its history...

Over the past year our clients have seen enormous increases in mobile and tablet driven traffic. In some cases this equates to well over 50% of all new visitors...

Are you a manufacturer or distributer wanting greater control over your brand?

Sparkstone retail is developing ways for you to gain greater control of the way your brand pages and your individual products appear on your resellers' websites.

In a world of constantly changing technology and media channels, it's a good idea to offer your customers an e-commerce experience that is responsive to their own specific needs and chosen browsing device.

Alan Howard are a leading trade supplier of hair dressing and beauty products throughout the UK.

SigmaSport, a London based cycle retailer, asked Sparkstone to deliver a mutlichannel solution that would enable them to sell product both in their bricks & mortar store as well as an online Ecommerce shop.

The core module package includes all of the above modules plus one site and user so that you can get going as soon as possible.It also includes the report centre as standard.

One of the simplest, most user friendly interfaces around to enable fast processing of sales in busy environments whilst enabling your staff to give the best customer service - no matter what their experience. Fast to learn - the average member of staff only needs 20 minutes to become familiar with processing sales. .

Stores details of customers, transactions, interests, buying habits, returns history etc - invaluable in building the value of your business

Manage stock throughout the business, across all sites and channels, accurate valuations, easy processing, complete histories, fantastic analyses.

Litecraft UK a leading retail supplier of lighting goods, asked Sparkstone to deliver a mutlichannel solution that would enable them to sell product both in their bricks & mortar stores as well as via an online Ecommerce shop.

The Loyalty Scheme manager module allows specification of loyalty points schemes that suits your business and allocates points to customers' purchases over a predefined periods of time

George Fisher are an industry leading supplier of hiking goods, camping equipment and outdoor sportwear. They asked Sparkstone to deliver a solution that would enable them to sell product both in their Keswick store as well as online via a new Ecommerce store.

Albam clothing are a London based retailer selling quality goods at the top end of high street fashions.

Andertons music, based in Guildford are one of the UK’s leading independent music retailers.   They pride themselves on being a market leader in the online space.  To stay at the forefront of digital commerce requires an awareness of the latest technological advances, the ability to recognise which of those technologies will help meet current and future business objectives and a passion to embrac

Allows the purchase of second hand item and the sale of such items including maintaining the 2nd hand stock book of buyers and sellers – now includes refurbishment of second hand items

Full assembly of completed stock items on either a “build for stock” or on a “build to order” basis, including multiple phases, use of components, own labour and sub contract labour (free issue), serialised components, assemble and disassemble, one click

The core module package incorporates our reports module which includes hundreds of standard reports covering the whole system. All of these reports have extensive searching, sorting and subtotalling options.

Sparkstone's user friendly database structure makes it easy for you to connect third party reporting packages to analyse and report on your data exactly as you wish. We can train you how to use these tools or write the reports for you.

Allows the import or export of any record or transaction into or out of the Sparkstone database to or from a variety of “text file” formats

Allows the entry of nominal ledger codes into Sparkstone and the generation of ledger entries via the production of batch files for import into the accounting system – for use with Sage, Exchequer and Access Accounts - ask for more details of other systems.

Integrates credit card processing software into Sparkstone so that you do not need to use separate PDQ/streamline machines.

Integrates post code look up software into Sparkstone.

Sparkstone Technology delivers a high quality, reliable hosting service from our dedicated servers housed in London.

Starting from a very traditional wholesale business in1870, GJW Titmuss have embraced new technology and business practices to become one of the UK's leading petfood retailers.  They now challenge the bigger high street names and supermarkets in online sales whilst also maintaining a strong customer loyalty in their bricks and mortar stores.

 Sigma Sport, a London based cycle retailer, asked Sparkstone to deliver an email marketing campaign that would be consistent in its styling as well as being able to track conversions.

Allows full processing of sales orders including back to back processing, order management, picking and dispatch

To be used in conjunction with Assemblies Module this module allows the customer to specify components and finishes to give a customer configured build to order.

Allows alternative currencies to be used as settlement for payment for goods sold in another currency (NB this is not a multi currency price list see above)

Allows the use of weighing scales to be integrated with point of sale operations.  Either independent label printing scales (weighted bar code) or fully tested and approved scales integrated directly into Sparkstone.

Allows in store concessions to be set up and monitored allowing concession stock to be sold at any point of sale and royalties/fees to be automatically calculated

Allows goods to be taken in for repair, allocation of materials and labour including sub contract issue and repair and billing to customer allows for simple scheduling

Allows the rental of one or more items to customers either on a long term or short term basis - including deposit calculations, rental agreements, standing order management

Purchase order processing and purchase invoice/credit entry – allows full true valuation of stock and true profit reports to be generated 

Automated calculation of re-order levels according to mins/maxs/ideals or expected sales levels taking into account items on order, branch requirements, special orders, supplier lead times etc.

Allows the storage of non-stocked items for sale by special order in addition to setting up buying agreements, forward contract prices and negotiated special discounts.

Allows up to five sets of variations of a stock item within a single SKU eg Size/Colour/Cut would be 3 sets of variations – also allows different VAT treatments, sales prices, purchase prices, supplier codes, bar codes, outers mixes per variation

Allows one or more serial numbers to be tracked per item either on purchase and sale or just on the sales side

Sparkstone EPoS and BackOffice gives you a single solution which truly leverages your business data a single database, a single interface no re-keying of data, no more errors between systems. Sparkstone EPoS is the key an extensible full featured, high value for money system that goes wherever you want to go.

Our software can be customised and tailored to your own requirements and specifications, providing you with a comprehensive solution. The following:

Suka Sport, are a London based clothing retailer specialising in outdoor and fitness clothing as well as some additional accessories.  They asked Sparkstone to deliver a mutlichannel solution that would enable them to sell product both in their bricks & mortar store as well as an online Ecommerce shop.

Allows customer special orders to be taken, deposits to be received, back to back orders to be placed on supplier, goods allocated to customer on receipt (or direct delivered to customer by supplier) and customer collection from site.

Manage shops, users and user rights, tills and channels. Amazing configuration options for point of sale, workflow, user definable fields and menus to suit your business.

Integrates credit card processing software into Sparkstone so that you do not Used for non-stock items- service sales, carraige, packing, insurance and delivery costs, storage fees, warranties and more can all be handled with ease and without setting up dummy stock records.need to use separate PDQ/streamline machines.

Manage supplier relationships and terms, know which suppliers work well, avoid overstocking and manage muliple suppliers for distributed products and monitor supplier performance

Full refund and stock return functionality including user rights, reason reporting, settlement choices and partial refunds.Also optional RMA, acceptance, write offs and returns location choices.

Standard tools to manage your sale prices responsively and intuitively. Bulk edit/update tools, time limited pricing and logical calculations mean that maintaining competitive prices without sacrificing margin has never been easier.

Allows sale of serial number tracked gift vouchers (either pre printed or generated at point of sale) and tracks redemption of vouchers and outstanding voucher liabilities. Vouchers can have redemption dates etc

Allows a fully functional sales ledger to be operated - including customer terms templates, flexible payment profiles, statements, allocations, un-allocations, bounced cheques, aged debt reporting and much more.

Allows different price lists for different groups of customers for different stock items for different sites/divisions/catalogues – can also be time limited

Allows a whole range of special offers, multi buys and promotions to be set up, including free item promotions, and time limited offers – can be linked to campaigns to monitor success and revenue generated

Provides access to a completely integrated function rich ecommerce site designed to perform and provide quick return on investment. Alternatively this module can provide upload and download links to your own existing website.