Ask HN: What kind of app would help Mom and Pop store owners?

5 points·bhu1st··6 comments

An inventory and stock manager app? Customer manager app? Marketing app? Feedback app? Vendor manager app? POS app?

I'm curios about ways to help small store owners. What could potentially be useful and helpful to them?

https://www.pointy.com/us was a very successful recent acquisition by Google, to give you a flavor

A better emulator or compatibility to run this r legacy DOS based POS/cashier/accounting systems on, so they don't have to upgrade. What is needed especially is a dongle interface and some printer emulation thing so they can emulate that Okidata, Citoah or whatever printer they depend on for receipts and reports.

A better question is what would they want. Mom and pop store owners are not sophisticated generally, so even a very useful app could easily be overlooked.

Whatever it does it has to be cheap. Cheap cheap. And easy.

Different kinds of mom and pop stores probably need significantly different apps.

A basic online store and digital marketing. I think stuff like shopify and square fill some of this. The marketing thing is possibly still do DIY or contract with a firm. Maybe I'm just not aware of an app in between.

The ability for them to sell products online and support curb side pickup.

Local SEO discovery made easy.

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