MerchantOS Acquired by LightSpeed

I have multiple bike related retail stores as clients (they mainly use Microsoft RMS Store Operations and NCR CounterPoint but a few use cash registers), I thought that this announcement from LightSpeed and MerchantOS would be of interest to those of you with bike shops/retail stores or even sporting goods related retail stores:

MONTREAL, Quebec (BRAIN) — MerchantOS, a popular retail POS software brand among bike shops, has been acquired by LightSpeed, a Montreal-based software company.

MerchantOS said its product line and team will continue with a new name: LightSpeed Cloud.

"Your product and price will stay the same," MerchantOS said on its website. "If you decide to change your plan you’ll be switched to our new pricing. Over the next few months we’ll transition all customers to our new user interface. Not to worry — we’ll give you the opportunity to review the new interface before you switch over. We’re sure you’ll like what you’ll see."

LightSpeed said the acquisition of MerchantOS expands its customer base by over 2,400 locations and adds a new "platform-agnostic" HTML-5-based POS system to its product offerings. LightSpeed's previous POS systems run only on Apple's Mac OS platform.

I personally prefer Microsoft RMS Store Operations for bike shops since it has a work order function for repairs and service work.  For larger bike shop retail stores, NCR CounterPoint has an add-on called ServicePoint that allows NCR CounterPoint to track repairs and service work (and scheduling as well for services like annual tune-ups).

Both Microsoft RMS Store Operations and NCR CounterPoint have kiting (kitting?) functions so you can bundle products together as part of a promotion or even a normal sale (ie. a starter bundle that includes a mountain bike, pads, water bottle, and helmet).


Are you in the US and in need of no cost retail point of sale advice? I'm happy to help and can be reached on my cell at 208-340-5632 (mountain time) or via email at kevinantosh@gmail.com.