The weather is getting nicer, and you are a little late on your spring cleaning. You call your friends and they are in the same predicament. Thank goodness for friends! So you all decide to gather up your extra things you have from your spring cleaning and have a big sale!
If you have ever managed a multi-seller garage sale, you already know the headache that this can bring. If you have never managed one, just take a look at the image below for the nightmare that awaits you.
That is all in the past thanks to a West Michigan based startup, husband and wife duo Holly and Brian Anderson, otherwise known as
Tallysheet.
“The traditional process of tracking how much each seller has earned in a multi-family garage sale is really time-consuming and antiquated. It usually involves peeling price tags off each item and sticking them on a poster board or notebook. Then adding up all those tags at the end of the sale. I kept thinking ‘There has to be a better way to do this!’" says Holly Anderson.
After hearing and experiencing the same problem again and again within their friend group, the Andersons decided to do something about it. Brian, a VP at local digital agency Brightly, and Holly, a Project Manager at Haworth, put their skills together to knock out an app ideation, creation, and launch in record time.
Sitting down in May of last year to ideate and prototype, they worked throughout the summer during their free time and were able to launch by September 2016.
The app does it all and with slick design for simple user interface. When asked about their favorite feature they created for the app the Andersons said, “I love that multiple cashiers can each be using their own phone to simultaneously checkout customers, and they can be anywhere in the garage—not stuck at a table behind a cash box.
Another great feature is that cashiers can run real-time reports at anytime to see how much they've earned. After all the hard work of pulling the garage sale together, it's really rewarding to see that total going up!”
You would expect these features and design type to be a product of a Silicon Valley startup or a top prospect fresh out of Y-Combinator, but we have the talent right here in West Michigan.
The app has seen the most installs and growth in the United States, United Kingdom, and Australia. It is safe to say that this app has gone global, showing that West Michigan has more than just manufacturing under its sleeve.
So we asked the Andersons if this cool new app is meant for just garage sales and they let us know that “in addition to garage sales and estate sales, we've seen people use it for all kinds of multi-seller events like craft sales, bake sales, fruit and vegetable stands, and multi-level marketing parties and shows [e.g. ThirtyOne bags, Premier Jewelry, etc.]. We've found that it's applicable across a broad market of sales events.”
Well you heard it here first folks, put away the dry erase board and the cash security box, and jump into the future with
Tallysheet!
Ken Miguel-Cipriano is Rapid Growth’s innovation and jobs editor. To reach Ken, you can email [email protected] or follow him on Twitter and Instagram.
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