Description

Secondo Store – Case Study
Detailed System Description

Preliminary System Description
Secondo Store has been operating since 2009, and is run by Dan Summers. Dan has provided the following preliminary information about the system he would like you to build, and is looking forward to meeting your team at the first interview you have organised.
____________________________________________________________________________
Secondo Store is my retail clothing recycle store located at Clayton Road, Clayton. We specialise in seconds, sample and pre-owned Designer, Vintage and Mainstream clothing, shoes and accessories for ladies.

Over time, we have developed a broad and loyal customer base, with most of our customers being females aged 25-60, who return to our store regularly. We have also developed a strong presence in the local area and undertake a range of advertising and marketing initiatives (such as print advertising, direct SMS communication, Instagram and visual merchandising of our windows) to further build and engage our customer base. We have also established good manual, internal business processes, but feel that the timing is right to automate some of our processes as many of the things we do are very time consuming.

We take stock from individual clients who want to sell their second hand clothing, shoes, etc. and business clients who want to sell out of season stock. We take their stock on consignment for 8 weeks, taking a commission on any sales made. Our stock is all currently managed manually. For the new system, I want to focus on automating all the processes associated with the stock. This includes automating processes such as trying to source stock from clients, marking stock down if it does not sell, returning stock to my clients if it does not get sold in the 8 week period, and paying clients if their stock does sell. I would like the new system to help me manage all these processes, so I know exactly where I am with stock at any given time.

Detailed System Description
Currently, when a client walks into the store with their stock, the first thing I do is to check if they are a
new client. If they are new, I get them to complete a client form – either business or individual (see Client Forms in the Sample files folder), allocate a client number to them, and put their details in a spreadsheet (see Client Spreadsheet in the Sample files folder), so that I can easily find client details when I need them. I give them a Secondo client card with their client number on it. They must have a registered PayPal account to facilitate payment for their sold stock, before I will accept any stock from them. I get their Paypal ID from them.

In the new system, I would like them to do this registration process online so that they can see the status of their stock at any given time. This will save me time, as I won’t have to deal with endless queries on the phone. Once they register and their account is active, I would like them to be able to login to view their personal details and change their details at any time if they need to, change their password if they want to, and view their stock history. For each stock item they have given the store they should be able to see a complete description of their stock item and the history of that particular stock item (e.g. markdowns, sold, returned, etc.) and anything else you think is useful for them. They should not be able to delete their account. If they want to delete their account, they should put in a request to me.

I would also like to help my clients decide on a sale price and markdown schedule for their stock. I want to be able to search the system to find similar items and check their selling price and markdown history, to help give my clients better advice.

I would also like to email all my clients requesting stock when I am running low in the store. Again I would like this done automatically based on the number of stock items currently in the store. It would be good if we could set up some sort of email template, and then maybe the system could do some sort of mail merge with the client data and send out personalised emails requesting stock. I would like to keep track of the email notifications sent to clients. I would also like to look at the number of stock items I have of a particular brand, as I often get queries from customers about whether I have particular brands in stock. They sometimes also enquire about a particular stock type e.g. pant, blouse, etc.