Tuesday, April 1, 2014

eCommerce and Store Commerce are merged seamlessly with eBay and Bravo.



Grand Announcement

Bravo - eBay Buya


Bravo Store Systems announces the release of our new eBay Bravo Buya application programing interface integration.  After 2 years of preparation and over $2m of development investment, Bravo went live with its exclusive Cloud Service API.   

Bravo team members acclaimed by eBay’s case study, extended its proprietary platform Cloud Services in creating Omni-Channel between the Brick & Mortar, Store front, Bravo P.O.S., eBay, and Buya.com.

Bravo roll-out today will include full eBay Auction integration included in the first phase of roll-out.  Second phase of roll-out scheduled to be released in the next 60 days will include 2 new major additional releases.   

First the eBay complete store front integration allowing Bravo’s users 100% of their in-store inventory to be simultaneously available in all 4 channels  (Store – eBay – Company website – BUYA.COM) with Buy-it-Now, Add to Cart, and Make Offer.

Second, BUYA eCommerce will support separate Branded Company websites.  Now Bravo customers can have their entire inventory for one or unlimited stores, roll into a Company’s Unique Branded eCommerce website.



1.  View of BUYA with item detail page on Auction integrated into Marketplace.


  •         Omni- Channel driving additional traffic to customer’s products.

  •         Bravo authorized cross branding with eBay drives customer confidence.



2. View of product from Bravo launched directly into eBay Auction on eBay.

  •  Utilizing your existing eBay account – seamless effort.

  •  Bravo’s exclusive “Quality Assessment” lowers return rate.

  • Integrated feature lowers your total cost to sell on eBay by up to 80%. 

  • Funds flow directly into your existing PayPal account



3.  BUYA manufacture model page with active auction item on eBay.


Monday, March 17, 2014

Are your store associates more than cashiers? Are they relevant?

The Empowerment Solution






I read this article by David Geisinger the Retail Business Strategy Lead for eBay.  He describes totoday's Customer and how a Point of Sale should empower your employees in providing compelling customer service agents.

Read on....
download -  Click Here

David Geisinger also writes:

In this point of view paper head of Retail Business Strategy for eBay Inc., shares his insights on today's retail store environment and discusses what steps retailers and brands must take to transform their sales associates from cashiers to true concierges.

If retailers and brands do not act now to change the in-store experience to meet today's consumer demands, they will, quite simply, not survive. Store associates are completely outgunned by today's connected consumer. They are on an island with limited access to information about their customers, their products and their overall brand. Retailers must enable and empower associates to deliver the ultimate consumer experience.

For more information on how Bravo can help your business reach the ultimate customer experience please talk to one of our Bravo Educators on this topic.

Steve Mack







Monday, February 24, 2014

Achieves top 10% website in the U.S.

Achieves top 10% website in the U.S.

February Sales are up 50% over last month and last year.

Buya.com is the eCommerce marketplace for Bravo System Users.

Bravo Systems Automatically Posts 100% of your inventory for Free.


The Bravo revolution continues to prove out its vision of the future of retail with the Buya.com website tracking $1m in sales for its Bravo Users selling at 62.45% margins.
  
Many of our Bravo users are experiencing whole store profitability increasing as much as 10% net profit by the acceleration of inventory turnover.

Ecommerce operability is just one factor of Bravo’s powerful services it provides its customers.  

It is a proven fact today that Cloud services which Bravo exclusively offers is saving on average $800.00 per month for a single store using server based technology like Data Age, Pawndex, Dazzle, and Compupawn.  

Store operators using old technology are losing as much as $5,000 per month.

Bravo today is the fastest growing provider of business technology and services to Pawn Brokers, Buy & Sells stores  in the United States, Mexico, and Europe.

For more information go to:   www.bravorevolution.com  

Check out the person to person live web demonstration.


Thursday, February 13, 2014

BRAVO DATA CONVERSION

Bravo Data Conversion
No hassle - Simple – Accurate


Bravo’s Team of DBA’s (Data Base Administrators we have 3 on staff) is the most experienced in the pawn industry with 60 years of collective experience.

We care more and understand because we lived through it just like you.  Many of you know that Bravo’s team was pawnbrokers, running stores, living it every day.  No one understands your business better, and living through it yourself as we have, there is no compromise of understanding  for us to understand what you have to live through during this transition.

No matter what platform, version, type, or language, Bravo guarantees data conversion 100%.

Guarantee?  Yes 100% guarantee and we determine this only until there is a smile on your face.  When our customers are happy is when our data conversion task is complete.

Bravo Team adds discipline to the process to insure your data is safe, and correctly applied to its new environment day one. 

Our goal is to deliver you a disruptive competitive service, not to disrupt your business.   We invest the extra time to insure that when you turn on Bravo it’s up to the day accurate.

Did you know that technology is moving 5 times faster than the retail industry?  How old is your system, how far back is your business today?

So far this year, Bravo is expanding and investing ($2m this year).   This week we installed our new IBM Fusion Data Center with VM Sphere located into their 14 Global Data Centers.  Faster – Better.  A system you can count on, build on, expand on.

So far this year our current users are experiencing explosive growth on www.buya.com.  

Our users are making more money in what has been termed a tough Pawn Broking environment last year.  “We are running our businesses the same as the last 20 years, but with Bravo we are just making a lot more money.”

At Bravo, we are never satisfied.  We know there are areas to improve on.  Yes, "definitely", but we are not sitting on our hands ignoring our customers.

Count on Bravo in providing you the highest quality SAAS services.  Period.



Saturday, February 1, 2014

WHY BRAVO?

 
IBM and Bravo

Why is Bravo Better?

This is the most frequent question we get.  The answer is quite simple and real.  

You get a whole lot for what you pay for with Bravo.

Even if our competitors gave away their software, what about that annual fee?

What do you get for those fees? Nothing!  Where is your software vendor taking you?

We contend and can show you factually these old systems are costing you a fortune.

Where is Bravo Going?

 You can be where Bravo is today and where IBM says Is the future.

 http://www.ibm.com/smarterplanet/global/images/us__none__predictions__5in5_2013_storymap_retail__900x587.jpg

Come test drive Bravo.
www.bravorevolution.com

Friday, November 29, 2013

How important is the Customer?

How important is the Customer ?

Do you need customers?

Do you know how much they are worth?

How much does it cost to acquire customers?


For this example let’s just look at YELLOW PAGES.  These other costs have to be taken into consideration.   Rent, Bill boards, Radio, TV, Telephone, Exterior Signage, Utilities, Banners, Social Media, Text Messaging, Direct Mail, Employee interaction, Word of mouth, Newspaper, Web Site, just to name a few.  In fact the true value of your business and most of your investment lies in the number of customers you have.  The lively hood of your business is determined by new customers and keeping the ones that you have, called retention.

I never really understood the depth of this question until I did an analysis of my advertising budget while I was CEO of SuperPawn.  One area of discussion was the YELLOW PAGES.  We were spending $315k per year for our stores and were introduced to a program where data was prepared by the Telephone Company of the number of calls we were receiving at each one of stores.  We also had a 3 day study of what type of calls we were receiving at the stores so we could attribute new customers and current customers along with the types of questions.

For an average store we were spending $750.00 per store per month.  We were getting 5 calls a day from new customers, so each call cost us $5.00 for each call.  We were successful 25% of the time in getting the customer into the store and 80% of the time conducted a transaction.  So we were successful in getting 30 customers a month for $750.00 or $25.00 per customer.  Wow.

We learned a lot just by the review and research.  We found that our interaction on the phone was weak.  It took too many rings to answer the phone and our employees were not trained on how to interact with customers on the phone. 
$ecret Phone Tip – customers calling for estimates for items were often told they had to come in.   Most of those did not come in.  Those customers that were given a courteous estimate of value, 90% came into the store.

But, $25.00 per customer blew me away, and that did not take in consideration telephone and employee costs.
We also found that if the customer did not come back the second time we lost money.  Customer retention is vital.
This is a great exercise in measuring Advertising dollars spent and return on investment. Every dollar of advertising should be evaluated by how many new customers will you get and keep.

The next evaluation is how much it costs you to acquire an item.  Yes, for every item that comes over the counter there is a cost to acquire that item.   So this is called overhead and driving increase volume of transactions drives down the cost to acquire.  The more efficient you can be, the lower the cost to operate.  This is one of the most important drivers to profitability you can produce with efficient accurate process.
Any slowdown can turn a profitable opportunity into a loser and it is really hard to figure out.  That is why gross profit is not a great way to determine success.

Increasing volume of sales is also one of the best methods to succeed.  Lowering margin and increasing turn is the most healthy and profitable way to improve your business.
So, sit down and analyze your advertising.  Pay attention to all of the time you are taking into conducting your business.  Organize yourself and your staff.  Get more done efficiently and you will find a better looking and successful business.
Figuring out what a customer is worth is called Customer Relationship Management.  A lot has to go into such an analysis, and each time a customer comes in to your store, each and every transaction has to be updated and evaluated.  BRAVO includes this very heavy data driven analysis called Customer CRM.



In Bravo you will know how much your customer is worth.  Bravo keeps track of every transaction of every customer every second.  Essentially Customers are worth their contribution over a lifetime.  The longer you keep a customer the more they are worth.  Bravo ranks your customers so you know who is the best, the top 10% and so on.  Check it out if free with Bravo and is only driven by the powerful Data Analytic's of BRAVO.