We’ve already written a few times about how Stitch Labs helps small, independent merchants manage their sales operations across a wide range of online marketplaces. Well now it’s making it easier to connect their online and offline sales, through a partnership with Verifone’s Sail payment processing system.
Stitch wants to make it easier for small, independent businesses to manage their CRM, product orders, and inventory all in one central location. To do that, it’s created a SaaS-based platform that allows independent designers, makers, and manufacturers to list their goods on multiple sales sites and keep track of their supply and demand, regardless of where goods were sold. To do so, it’s integrated with major sales platforms such as Etsy, Shopify, and BigCommerce.
But what happens when those vendors sell goods out in the real world, at craft or maker fairs, or at other events or expos? It used to be that there was no way to have those transactions automatically connect to their online sales systems — they’d have to go back and manually enter transactions after the fact to keep track of sales and inventory. Well not anymore: Stitch just announced an integration with Verifone’s Sail card reader and payment processing app.
With the Sail integration, Stitch customers will be able to sell their goods, process credit card transactions, and have inventory automatically updated on the fly. By doing so, Stitch (and Sail) can help bridge the divide between both online and offline sales, making it easier for small business owners to keep track of things, whether they’re selling at a craft fair or on Etsy.
That’s all possible because Sail has rolled out a platform that includes a mobile SDK packing encryption, real-time fraud screening and boarding APIs, and merchant processing and settlement services. The Sail offering is built to work with third-party marketing, loyalty, and social media tools, so connecting with an inventory management solution like Stitch makes sense. Sail charges a 1.9 percent fee for transactions made with merchants who pay a monthly subscription fee of $9.99 a month to use the service, and a 2.7 percent fee for sales of merchants who don’t pay the subscription fee.
Of course, Sail’s card reader competes with other payment processing solutions — like Square and PayPal Here, among others. But Square has rolled out its own inventory management solutions with Square Register, and has a closed API — so Stitch wouldn’t be able to hook up to its system. And PayPal, while it plans to be open, only recently launched. That’s not to say that Stitch won’t work with other payment processors in the future, just that this is the first integration it’s been able to pull off.
Stitch Labs raised $1 million in seed funding from True Ventures in February. It’s based in San Francisco and now has five full-time employees.