Nailsea Music Shop

17 March 2006

Marston and Diane Dufty, of Nailsea Music Shop in North Somerset, carry several thousand stocklines in their busy music shop. Stock management was becoming a major issue for them. Using a simple online application they now maintain a real-time stock record whether they sell musical instruments and sheet music over the shop counter or through their website.

Video Transcript

Nailsea music shop is a general music job selling instruments and sheet music and the accessories that go with them.  It was started by my wife in 1988 with the view to running the business on until I retired from my previous occupation, which I did in 1996.  In the meanwhile she ran the business and I spent some time retraining to learn how to repair stringed instruments, woodwind instruments: flutes, clarinets, saxophones and oboes. 

The main problems which confronted us in the business was simply that we didn’t realise the business would grow quite as quickly as it did.  When we were both working at it, we found that there was a good deal of confusion regarding stock records and accounting records, and we simply had to do something to pull that situation back and to take control of it.  We have hundreds of lines, and there was great confusion, things would disappear, and we lost track of a number of items that were quite high value.  We were fine again eventually, but we realised very quickly that what we needed to do was to employ an electronic point of sale system in order to keep track of this stock situation. 

We saw no limitations to the system at all, until it had been running for about 3 or 4 years, when it suddenly appeared to start to let us down and some of the data became corrupted.  Eventually when we started to look for a replacement system we realised that the major drawback was that it was a DOS-based system, and therefore couldn’t be properly integrated with any other database such as the type of thing that would run a website. 

Finding the relevant hardware and software was at first a daunting prospect, when I opened the Yellow Pages and looked at the number of people who were offering their services.  To be honest it frightened me somewhat and then I saw an advert for Business Link which I phoned, and the help I got from Business Link helped me on my way to obtain the solutions that I’ve got today.

The technology has helped us in two ways.  When I receive stock from a wholesaler, I enter it into the point of sale system stock base and then I can then choose whether on not to display that on the website, if I choose not to, it simply remains a part of our stock.  If I choose to display it on the website, it’s able to be purchased online, and automatically then deducted from the stock that we hold in the shop, so what we’ve really got is a real-time updating of the stock which is on display on the web.

This will demonstrate to you how easy it is to actually get from the point of sales screen into our website, and if necessary I can get into the administrative side of the website to alter detail.  I just press this button here and there it is.  If we want to see if our stock displayed is available for sale on the net, if I click on ‘shop window’, and then click on ‘accessories’, ‘list of accessories’, we’ll select ‘metronomes’, and there they are.  The stock management system is helping us because it identifies those items of stock which are moving quickly, and which are moving slowly and it enables us to take decisions about those items of stock that we really should be keeping, and those which we ought not to be keeping.

The total investment was just over £7000 and I would hope to recover that money within 18 months to 2 years.  My advice to businesses looking to manage their stock with the use of technology is to do it as quickly as they possibly can.  Our experience is that it certainly helped us get a handle on this business and we’re set for future expansion.

On the other hand, if anyone is inclined towards what you might call, creative accounting, then forget it!

www.all-music.co.uk