Grow Your Spring Revenue with Mobile Cloud POS

Clear skies and warming temperatures mark the beginning of a financially fruitful yet highly stressful season for local garden centers, nurseries, farm and fleet retailers, and big-box stores alike.

As businesses prepare for the crowds of gardening professionals and hobbyists eager to shop for the new growing season, their POS systems can quickly turn into their greatest ally or their biggest point of failure. To flourish in 2026 and capitalize on the spring rush, lawn and garden retailers must embrace management systems and tools designed for this seasonal intensity and the evolving needs of their customer base.

With 60% to 70% of annual plant revenue at stake, a cloud-based mobile POS can make a significant difference.

Pruning the wait time at checkout

The best sales happen in the yard or greenhouse, not at the register. Your spring customers are likely stocking up on supplies such as soil, heavy planters, and other bulky items; the last thing they want is to haul all these items to a distant checkout area and then stand in a long line.

According to a recent Queueaway report, nearly 60% of US consumers will abandon a line if the wait is 5 minutes or longer. When lines don’t move, potential buyers may start to wonder whether this purchase is worth the wait. Wouldn’t it be easier to just order online? Maybe a competitor has a better price. It’s a quick and easy decision for them, but a costly and consequential one for you and your business.

Another aspect that retailers don’t consider is that every minute a customer waits in a long line is a minute they aren't browsing the store for additional or complementary items. During a busy season, those lost opportunities can quickly add up.

The mobile POS advantage: By placing your employees into high-traffic hot zones and equipping each with a handheld POS, you’re ensuring that every potential purchase turns into actual revenue. Your team can easily confirm pricing for tagless items via product lookup, suggest related items to increase basket size, and close the sale on the spot before a customer changes their mind.

Inventory rooted in accuracy

If you want to maximize your profitability during this peak season, your inventory must be on point. Stockouts of popular items during high-volume weekends turn into lost revenue you won’t be able to recover. At the same time, overstocking on perishable items that don’t sell during their prime window becomes a 100% loss that eats away at your profits. To optimize your stock levels, you need clear, real-time visibility into product levels across all your retail locations.

The mobile cloud POS advantage: These devices support two crucial aspects of inventory management: tracking and strategic planning. For tracking, think of them as portable data terminals that follow the plants wherever they go. You can use them to scan shipments as they are received on the dock to accurately catalog and update in-store item availability for your sales associates and online shoppers, or conduct mini-cycle counts during slow times to identify “shrink” from lost or dead plants without having to wait for end-of-season audits.

By synchronizing real-time data across all your departments and locations to create a single source of truth — using historical data to support dynamic forecasting  —  your POS system enables you to make better inventory decisions. You can get real-time inventory velocity reports to discount slow-moving items before they die, automated low-stock alerts on high-selling items before they reach a critical threshold, and proactive suggestions for internal transfers of items from overstocked locations to stores in need.

Plant your seasonal crew for success

For an industry that’s already plagued by labor shortages, hiring and onboarding 2-3x the staff for a short period becomes both a race against the clock and an operational headache. Many of the seasonal employees do not yet have extensive product knowledge or familiarity with the retailer’s current RMS software, so proper onboarding becomes crucial. At the same time, retailers cannot afford to spend hours on training every time they hire a new cashier for the spring rush.

The mobile POS advantage: A modern, mobile POS system that works intuitively helps reduce onboarding time from hours to minutes, empowering your seasonal team to perform like tenured pros from the start. With self-guided, multi-format learning experiences that appeal to your cross-generational workforce, your team can master the basics quickly and become productive contributors on day 1. On the sales floor, mobile POS becomes an essential source of plant knowledge, making it easy for employees to find answers to customers’ questions on the spot without consulting other colleagues or running off to look things up. When your team spends less time fielding inquiries and more time helping customers, your ROI reflects this focus.

“With Epicor Propello, new staff is productive faster than we ever thought possible. Instead of working registers, our most knowledgeable people are now on the sales floor, answering customer questions and driving sales.” 

Luke Venable,
General Manager, Forest Lake Greenhouses, Inc.

Cultivate loyalty that blooms all year long

Your spring-rush customers’ wants and needs can be just as diverse as the plants you carry. Whether you’re dealing with a time-starved botanical bento box seeker, a precision-gardening novice who wants to improve their backyard without harming their pet, or a frequent shopper who just wants to be appreciated for their continuous business, personalization is key. When your cloud POS is equipped with kitting features, special order support, built-in loyalty programs, and comprehensive customer data at the point of sale, your team can help build a positive experience during every customer interaction. Spring may bring crowds to your store. But it’s the moments you create throughout the purchase process that will keep them coming back throughout the year.

Interested in making this spring season less stressful and more profitable? Discover how Epicor can make your everyday business life easier. Join us for “Spring Rush Ready: Smarter POS to Support Seasonal Demand” webinar: Register here.