Hi everyone,

I help run a specialty store, and our main product lines include historic and souvenir swords for the weapons enthusiast. I'm looking to put out a catalog to send to customers, both current and potential, but I have a couple of major questions.

1. How do I do this? How do I go about producing a catalog and then distributing it to the folks who would be interested in seeing it?
2. With all these items and orders, how do I go about managing all of this? Does anyone have experience with any order management software that would be helpful in this case?

Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance!

Happy Halloween everyone!

I've been gathering information on programs that could help me manage a larger volume of orders than what I currently have (potentially 50+ per day). Before I move forward with any one specific solution, I wanted to see if there were any opinions from you folks.

I've been checking out OrderSuite (www.ordersuite.com), and I actually called them last week. The rep was really helpful and even offered to schedule a demo with me to show me how to work the program. It really seems it'll be a whole lot better than what I'm currently doing with MS Excel - then again, maybe anything would be better than using Excel.

Anyway, before I spend any money, I wanna hear what this forum has to say, and if someone knows of any comparable programs out there.

A supplier of mine uses Zoovy www.zoovy.com. As a customer of my supplier, I have been satsified with every purchase, never a hiccup... Always get what I ordered.

Thanks for the Zoovy idea. I think it would be great for my online store, but I'm not entirely e-commerce-based. I will, however, pass the link on to my colleagues who are looking for exactly what Zoovy can provide, so thank you!

I just put in my request into Google, and I found a couple more options that seem viable: Mail Order Manager (MOM) and Order Motion. All opinions on any of these three programs (including OrderSuite) would be greatly appreciated!

Hello all,

Thank you all so much for all the great input thus far. I hope that everyone was able to enjoy a relaxing Thanksgiving weekend.

My question today is this: How are you all managing your business processes going into the holiday season? Everything seems to want to slow down these days, and I'm curious as to some of the ways that you're dealing with the slowdown. Or, perhaps you aren't experiencing a slowdown at all? Much appreciation in advance for your input!

You might deal with slow periods by taking care of those nagging little projects, that little "to do" list you might have. Or you might even take the time to start on some strategic planning or goal setting for 2006...

Hi,
You may want to try InstantSalesTracker. It handles everything you have need: customers, suppliers, inventory & accounts. And it would work great in a catalogue-based business such as your own.

You can download a free trial at:
http://www.InstantSalesTracker.com

I hope this helps.

Just something to chew on... I believe that both UPS and FedEx have programs for managing inventory that works well with their shipping companies. If you are going to be shipping the products, I would suggest contacting one of these and see if their programs can help.

Hi everyone,

Happy New Year - Hope everyone passed a nice holiday! I can't believe how crazy it's been around here. I've hardly had time to visit the forum, much less post and respond to messages. Thank you all, especially Steven, jDynamic, and RCBricker, for the great input so far and for the words of encouragement in my inbox.

Business was actually really great during holiday - far beyond my team's projections. Strangely enough, we're maintaining a pretty steady cash flow even though Christmas has come and gone. Is anyone else experiencing a similar situation? Any ideas on how to keep this positive flow going? Much appreciated!

Maybe I'm late now, but I'm not so sure that leaving MS Office aside is a correct choice.

With a small amount of work you can customize Access to fit you needs exactly. In this way you will have no more and no less than what you need. Wether a specific application is better than an Excel list, I'm not so sure that, fully exploiting Office, you do not have already what you need.
I've seen a number of small business leveraging the suite with good results.