If you’ve sold at markets, pop-ups, or conventions, you’ve probably run into a version of this: your POS system tracks what sold, but not what it actually took to make it – and that gap can quietly cost you inventory you didn’t know you’d already spent.
Here's how we built a custom point-of-sale system for a convention retailer juggling two different kinds of inventory at once - and why off-the-shelf software couldn't keep up.
The Business
FanForge sells fan-art apparel at comic, anime, and pop-culture conventions across Canada. Their model is built around the show floor: staff bring a catalog of original designs, applied to shirts on the spot via heat-press, along with a stock of blank apparel in a range of styles, sizes, and colours. Customers grab an already-finished “table copy” and walk away immediately, or pick a design and have it custom-pressed while they keep shopping the rest of the convention.
It’s a fast, high-volume environment – hundreds of interactions over a single weekend, constant decisions about what’s actually in stock, and a team that needs to move without second-guessing whether something’s available to sell.
The Problem
FanForge came to us running entirely on Square for payments, with no inventory system built for how their business actually works.
A hidden inventory conflict
FanForge’s booth model relies on two different kinds of stock: unused art designs, ready to be pressed to order, and blank shirts, ready to receive one. A pre-made “table copy” display sample uses up one of each – meaning it’s already accounted for, even though it’s just sitting on the table, not sold yet. Without a system that understood that distinction, it was easy to end up in a spot where the numbers said more was available than actually existed.
No shared visibility
Sales rung up on one device weren’t visible anywhere else. No single source of truth for what had sold, what was still being made, or what a customer was waiting on.
Manual, easy-to-drop follow-up
Requests for a sold-out design, or promises to text a customer when their order was ready, depended entirely on staff remembering – with nothing backing them up.
What We Built
We designed and built a custom point-of-sale app from the ground up, tailored specifically to how FanForge sells at a show.
A two-pool inventory system
Every sale checks and updates two separate pools at once: design/art stock, and blank-apparel stock, tracked by style, size, and color. Both have to be available for a sale to go through, and both update instantly and automatically the moment it does.
A third pool for table copies
Pre-pressed display samples are tracked separately from raw materials, deducted from inventory the moment they’re pressed rather than when they eventually sell. That one decision closed the exact gap causing inventory mismatches.
Real, in-app card payments
We integrated Square’s card-reader technology directly into the app, so every transaction – cash or card – is processed and recorded the same way, with nothing to reconcile by hand after the show.
One shared, live view for the whole team
Every sale becomes a real order the instant it happens, visible to every staff device at once.
Automatic pickup texts
When a custom order is ready, the app texts the customer automatically – no manual step, no forgotten follow-ups.
A place to log the “did you have…” moments
When a customer asks about a sold-out design, staff log it in a couple of taps, with an optional way to capture contact info for follow-up. What used to get lost in a busy show now turns into a list FanForge can actually act on.
Individual, revocable staff access
Each team member logs in with their own credentials rather than sharing one PIN. If a phone is lost or someone leaves the team, their access shuts off instantly without touching anyone else’s.
The Result
FanForge now runs their convention sales on a system built specifically around how their business operates, not a generic retail template forced to fit. The app handles real payments end to end, keeps inventory accurate across a genuinely tricky multi-pool model, and gives the team shared visibility they never had before – built to scale from a single staffer to a full team.
Most businesses don’t need more software – they need software that actually understands how they operate. FanForge didn’t need a bigger POS system, they needed one that knew the difference between a design that’s still available and one that’s already spoken for. If your business runs on a workflow like that too – one that off-the-shelf tools keep almost fitting, but never quite – that’s exactly the kind of problem we like solving.
Got a Workflow Off-the-Shelf Software Can't Keep Up With?
If your business runs on a process that generic tools weren't built for, we'll design something that fits the way you actually work - not the other way around.
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No - it's built specifically for FanForge's internal team and isn't published to public app stores. That's intentional: it's a private operational tool, not a product for public download.
