Page 1 - CerTek -Crossroads Handcrafts - 5-10-16

Crossroads Handcrafts

For the nonprofit, fair trade, volunteer-run shop Crossroads Handcrafts of the World in Bloomington, Illinois –
commonly known as Crossroads – the name of the game is “fair trade.” Crossroads, led by store manager Renee
Warren, long sought to bring the fair trade “production and transportation model” to the fore with their store.

“We are a retail shop that only buys goods from artisans and co-ops that are fair trade,” said Renee.
“We buy everything from a wholesale service company that takes care of importing and the Co-ops in less
developed countries.”

‘Too Many Goods, Too Many SKUs’

The goal for Crossroads, a feature of the older soaps, candies, toys, clothing and coffee made
downtown Bloomington for 27 years, is to not only managing and updating every single item unwieldy.
make sure the factories producing the goods it Renee and the others needed a robust POS that
sells are run in a safe and environmentally friendly was equipped to handle a seemingly endless variety
manner, but to also ensure that the artisans and of handmade items. And their old, single POS cash
workers creating the goods are fairly compensated – register simply wasn’t cutting it.
right down to the coffee served in the store. Renee
is proud of the high quality of each handmade item, “We’re all volunteers except for me – I’m paid and
pointing out how no two items are the same and work part time.” said Renee. “We had [the old POS]
how rolling tweaks to the design and features of the for 10 years. It was hard for volunteers to use.”
items are common.

This, of course, created a problem for Crossroads, The experts at CerTek were readily
which Renee summed up as “too many goods and available and always happy to talk.
too many SKUs.” The enormous inventory of jewelry,