Customer story: The Point Skate Shop

About the business

• Type: Retail
• Location: Fairview, TX
• Employees: 5
• POS: Lightspeed Retail

Background

The Point Skate Shop–or just “The Point” to devotees– is the brainchild of Daniel Brodsky and Nate Smith, who are long time skateboard fanatics.  After working for years at other skate shops, Daniel and Nate realized their dream six months ago, and opened up The Point.

The Point is a combination retail environment/skateboard education hub, complete with a 1500 square foot ramp for customers to try out their new gear right there in the store.  Needless to say, The Point is a haven for all those who love to skate, whether they are novices or pros.

Running a lean ship, Daniel has a whole host of responsibilities at The Point, starting with Owner and Manager.  In his words, “I do it all,” meaning team management tasks–like employee scheduling, managing timesheets, and payroll–fall on his shoulders.

The problem

Daniel has a million tasks on his plate at any point in the day, and he’d rather be interacting with customers or skating himself, not building schedules. Prior to using Homebase, Daniel was stuck using an Excel spreadsheet for scheduling.  

While it almost got the job done, he noted “I almost never allowed my employees to trade shifts” because of the complexity involved, meaning that employees were stuck with schedules that didn’t meet their needs.  

Daniel started using Homebase, and was thrilled to see that it integrated with his new point of sale system, Lightspeed Retail.  Through the integration, employee names and information is pulled in automatically, meaning that Daniel could quickly build a schedule within minutes of set-up.  

How Homebase helped

“As a small business, your time is 100% your money,” Daniel notes, and with Homebase, you can save a whole bunch of money because scheduling is so much easier.  With Homebase “it takes me less than 20 minutes to make a schedule each week, and I don’t ever have to look back.”  

Using our shift trading capabilities, Daniel notes that he “do[es]’nt need to manage the schedules” after publishing, and that “if employees have a problem, they can manage it through the app, and they don’t have to come to [him].”

Now that employees have the option to trade shifts, they are excited that Daniel has made the shift over to Homebase too.  “They all like it,” he says, “they all have the app and appreciate getting the notifications when they are scheduled.”

And as a bonus to Daniel, they all know their schedule, “and they don’t have to call me!”  “Communication is key to employee success, and with Homebase, everyone is on the same page.”

The integration with Lightspeed Retail has been a bonus to Daniel, as he can check his Homebase mobile app at any point in the day from any location, and see how his labor is tracking versus sales.  

Daniel says he “constantly” stays logged into the Homebase app when he is away, so that he can manage his business while he is not there.

Says Daniel, employee scheduling is “a big headache that can take up a lot of time in the day.  With Homebase, I no longer have to deal with ANY of that.”  And now he can go back to what he loves most: inspiring the Fairview community to learn how to skateboard.