Setting Up Mix and Match Promos in Square for a Clothing Brand

[hawaiimulisha]

I operate a clothing stall at local markets and utilize Square for handling payments. My inventory comprises various categories like t-shirts, hoodies, dresses, snap backs among others, each having a standard price. I often run promotions like buying two or more hoodies at a discounted price of $40 each (originally $50 each), and similar discounts for t-shirts.

Now, I am keen on introducing a mix and match promo where if a customer purchases more than one item, any additional items will be priced at the sale rate. For instance, if a customer buys one t-shirt and decides to add a hoodie, both items should ring up at the sale price, making it $20 for the t-shirt and $40 for the hoodie instead of $25 and $50 respectively.

I am reaching out to see if anyone has experience or suggestions on setting up such a promotional scheme in Square. Is there a feature that allows applying different discounts to different item categories when purchased together? Any guidance or alternative solutions to achieve this would be greatly appreciated!

[TheRealChipA]

Hi @hawaiimulisha.  You can set up automatic discounts to do what you are wanting to do. 

When you create a discount, toggle on discount rules.  Select Quantity as the type of discount and press Done.

It sounds like you want to make the quantity 2.  Then you can either add individual items it applies to, or individual categories.  Alternatively, you can apply this to all items automatically.

Click on Add discount rule.  Decide how you want this discount to act.  It sounds like you want to use the Buy one, get one type.  Set the discount to 50%, and set the items that can be discounted — most likely you will either Add all items or Copy eligible items.

Set it up and give it a go on a test transaction.  Let me know if you have any other questions.

[hawaiimulisha]

So the mix & match deal I'm trying to do is buy any 2 items from different categories but depending what the item is the discount will be different. So for example if I buy 2 hoodies I get $10 off each hoodie but if I buy  2 dresses I would get $15 off each dress. Is there a way to set an automatic discount if I wanted to buy one dress with $15off & one hoodie with $10 off?

[TheRealChipA · Accepted solution]

Hey, again, @hawaiimulisha.  Good to hear from you and I appreciate the specificity of your example!

Obviously, the first two discounts (2 hoodies, 2 dresses) are easy enough for you to set up.  Just create a “Quantity” automatic discount for each category and specify quantity 2.  Then decide if you are going to apply the discount to exactly 2 hoodies/dresses (exact quantity) or to all hoodies/dresses once 2 are purchased (minimum quantity).

Your other discount, however, is not possible at the moment.  If you want to know the reason, here it is.

Currently you can not set a discount condition that specifies that the customer MUST choose one from one category and one from another category.  If your discounts were the same (ie - $15 for both categories) you could do this.  But since Square discounts don’t allow you to say “if customer purchases 1 hoodie and 1 dress” the discount you want to do is not possible.  I tried to think of a couple of immediate work-arounds but none of them worked in practice, I’m sorry to say.  

You’ll need to head over to the Ideate Board and submit a feature request to the Square Point of Sale team. Explain how this discount works.  Basically you want multiple conditions that all have to be satisfied in order to trigger the automatic discount — ie:

• 1 from category A and 1 from category B = apply discount
• OR 1 from category A and 2 from category B = apply discount
• OR 1 from category A and 1 from category B and 1 from category C = apply discount
• etc

Of course, the feature request route is not a quick one.  There is an evaluation process, etc, before it would even get on the product roadmap.

At this point, since there is no way to accomplish what you want automatically, you will just have to set up a manual discount and train your employees to add it for the third use case of 1 hoodie + 1 dress.  It’s not perfect, but at least you can do what you want.

Let me know if you have any other questions.  Also, post a link here when you submit your feature request to the POS team.  I’ll be certain to like/upvote it and add my comments/thoughts.

[Candlestore]

@hawaiimulisha ;

I agree with @TheRealChipA ; Automatic discounts would work for you and you do not have to specify the actual Item but can specify Categories if you have the items in a category.  To learn more about automatic discounts read here : 3955-create-and-manage-discounts