Need ideas on how to sell a POS system

[ScottSwan]

My wife and I were buying a good size pizza joint last year and I hand picked and purchased a POS system for it.
We ran into major issues with the owner and backed out of the deal, before the POS system got installed.

So now it sits in my house while I ponder on how to sell it without loosing a ton of money.

The system is 4 touchscreen's with CC swipers running XP pro, 3 kitchen printers, a cash drawer and one receipt printer. Software is Point of Success with employee timeclock, delivery mapping and caller ID. It's all top notch, industry standard stuff, I did my research when I put all this together. It ran about $13,000.

Now I'm stuck with it.
I've had it up on PMQ, Craigslist, eBay and talked with local restaurants... no bites.

Can anyone suggest some ideas on how to sell this system?

 

[DTSMAN]

Oouch!!!

Here is what you will run into. It is like buying a car. You pay 23,000 for it new and as soon as you drive it off the lot its worth, ehh...18 used.
Good luck, and prepare for a hefty loss.

Bo

Remember,
If the women don't find you handsome,
they should at least find you handy.
(Red Green)

http://www.redgreen.com

 

[ArgoNavis]

It occurs to me that there are probably still quite a number of restaurants which have been stalling on taking the necessary steps to become PCI-DSS compliant. The costs associated with that can be significant, and I could imagine that some of these businesses may like the idea of upgrading their POS system *and* becoming compliant in one fell swoop.

However, these are precisely the businesses which probably don't cruise the internet for good deals on POS systems. You might need to resort to some cold-calling, and perhaps even leverage your IT expertise to help with the install.

Good luck.

AN.

 

[rdubrey]

Yeah, that is tough. It slightly worse than buying a new car. Where are you located?

Rob

 

[ScottSwan]

Thanks for telling me what I don't really want to hear!
But you guys are right, I'm going to take a hit no matter how I slice it. If I could get $10k for the whole thing I could still sleep at night. I'm in lower Michigan, just north of Ann Arbor. There are a few new restaurants going up in the area and we are going to try and get in touch with the owners. One is a chain so I'm betting they already have a contract with one of the big Revention's or Speedline's, but they might listen when I tell them mine is brand new and can be had for far less than half of the cost of the big guys.

 

[WaitronUnit]

An even greater challenge is the software that's installed on it. Since I'm not familiar with yours, I won't venture a guess on its versatility for possible implementation in a non-pizza setting.

However, the hardware of course has value. If indeed the system was *never* put into production (i.e., into active use at the site) then you might consider trying to sell it without the POS software. Most non-technical people will naturally think that it will only work in one type of environment -- in this case, a pizza place. What's the manufacturer and model of the touchscreens, and are they all-in-one units or are the screens separate-but-attached to small computers?

Back to the point... take the value of the original sale. Deduct the service-related fees (installation, training, support if any, etc.). Arrive at the value of the hardware and deduct about 15% for every year of its age. Hope this helps you in pricing the system for sale....

 

[ScottSwan]

Ok I reduced the price and reposted on Craigslist...

http://detroit.craigslist.org/bfs/336919711.html

Thats a really good deal... I would have jumped on that back when I was pulling my hair out researching all the POS stuff!

The software is quite flexible, plus I went ahead and got the premium version so it should work well in just about any type of restaurant.

I also talked with an owner of a new (just opened yesterday) coney place. He seemed interested and said to check back in a month after he has his feet on the ground.

Thanks for all the tips!

 

[ScottSwan]

As an FYI to anyone researching POS software, I made a huge post over at PMQ containing all of my research notes about each POS software vendor that I checked into...

http://www.pmq.com/tt/viewtopic.php?t=594

That along with several follow up comments might help anyone who's going through the same research.



-Scott

 

[Dataman55]

I've been in POS sales for the past 17 years. I don't think you can sell the software. Most POS companies have a fee for relicenseing . I don't know to much about your POS software