Can’t make heads or tails of your retail software and hardware? Just need a little hand-holding while transitioning to a new system? Sean Quinn can help. A former corporate success story and serial entrepreneur who just can’t seem to get out of the technology industry, Quinn founded All Point Retail to assist retailers in need of anything from a little IT support to some serious intervention.
In short, if your store uses anything fancier than an old solar-powered calculator to make change for customers, there’s something on All Point’s menu for your business. Plus, Quinn can elucidate his company’s service offerings in a way that even the greenest of shop owners can understand.
The big brands are making sex toys more accessible, but customers still want the ‘intimate’ experience of the boutique shops.
“We provide all of the technology infrastructure and services a retailer needs at the brick-and-mortar level,” explains Quinn. “We implement retail software platforms that provide true unified commerce solutions, including POS, OMS, CRM, ecommerce and warehouse management. We write necessary integrations across multiple platforms, and we also provide retail consulting and best practices culled from our work across all verticals. Our solutions are agnostic to software and hardware.”
You read that right: all verticals. Quinn’s company can come to your aid regardless of what you sell, though he admits having a soft spot for the adult space.
“All Point focuses on many retail verticals, but this is one of our largest and favorite,” he gushes. “We love the ownership of the many groups within this industry, and the passion within it. It’s contagious.
“This industry is also incredibly supportive and sharing, and I honestly don’t know why more people don’t seek it out,” adds Quinn. “These are some of the best retail operators of all the verticals that we touch.”
Like many in the industry, especially tech consultants, Sean Quinn found himself here by accident.
At Michigan State University, he majored in advertising, a specialty he says he still heavily leans upon in his current line of work. After eight years and several domestic and international moves with the U.S. military as an army captain, Quinn settled in Hawaii. There, he began his corporate career with IKON Office Solutions, making use of his military background as national director of federal government operations and general manager for Hawaii.
After quitting the corporate world in 2007, Quinn spent the next 10 years weaving in and out of the technology industry. He started by launching his first tech firm, focusing on offering “technology as a service,” as Quinn calls it, to any kind of business in need. He sold that company in 2011 after grossing $15 million, growing sales from the $1 million mark in just four years. Quinn jumped into another startup after the sale, but by 2017 found himself right back where he began — as an all-things-tech guy — and he’s been helping out retailers ever since.
All Point Retail prides itself on being a jack-of-all-trades — and a master of all of them.
“We are the only group that is solutions-neutral, so we can hold our client’s hand throughout every single part of the process,” says Quinn. “Hardware, software, migration from the old system and training on the new system.”
But that doesn’t mean All Point isn’t also a pleasure industry specialist. Besides genuinely enjoying interacting with the adult space, Quinn says he and his team have become quite adept at it.
“Because we have so many adult-focused retailers in our client portfolio, we understand the industry and unique challenges around it,” Quinn points out. “We’re proud of the industry and constantly promote it in our social media, our Retail Radar blogs and retail industry presence advocacy.”
Quinn focuses heavily on keeping his IT services accessible to all budgets with a pricing system that keeps small businesses in mind, too.
“Our business model requires no investment upfront and includes all of the hardware, software, implementation and ongoing services and consulting for one monthly charge,” Quinn notes. “This removes the barrier to change because of the upfront capital expense, which is the thing that keeps so many from making a move.”
All Point’s current client list includes Adam and Eve, Lover’s Lane and all of the Playboy Group brands, including Honey Birdette lingerie.
“Some use us for all of their technology needs and some just partial,” says Quinn. “That’s the beauty of our model. We are there to support them however they need us to.”
Quinn and the All Point team attend, as he insistently highlights, all of the industry trade shows while also visiting clients at their stores throughout the year. Quinn says in-person relationship building is at the core of his company’s values — and considering how much Quinn talks up his fondness for adult industry clients, it seems likely that said clients find those business-slash-friendly-catch-up meetings enjoyable as well.
Yet customer service excellence and top-tier tech solutions aside, can Quinn actually help adult retailers reduce the strain of being, well, “adult”?
“At All Point, because of our commitment to this industry, we’ve actually solved a lot of these issues, or at least mitigated them,” he proclaims. “We deliver merchant rates lower than traditional ones because of our size and scope, and we finance retailers with packages in places that others would not. We are also working on an ongoing project to streamline the procurement process between manufacturers, distributors and retailers to get the best inventory levels and pricing into the retailer’s hands as frictionlessly as possible. This can be done via integrated platforms, and we are working hard to make it mainstream.”
Quinn’s business savvy hasn’t glossed over his retail clients’ worries about the inexorable rise of sex toy sales by pharmacies and enormous nationwide chains, either. He believes he’s found the right approach to help balance the stress placed upon retailers by this new level of competition.
“The proliferation of adult toys into big-box brands like Target and Sephora certainly helps desensitize the stigma,” Quinn advises clients and colleagues. “However, the advantage is still with the independent adult retailers. With their ability to provide knowledge, training, intimate consulting and better personalization — particularly with the right tech stack and training behind them — we see nothing but positive traction for our adult store owners. The big brands are making sex toys more accessible, but customers still want the intimate experience of the boutique shops.”
