Sure we dabbled with small Magento extensions over the years, but this one was much more about a product we hope will prosper through the Magento and open source community.

We listened to many merchants in 2023 - and yet again that's thanks to Hyvä affording us more time from our day-to-day development, we could begin to look at innovative ways to help merchants with Magento. OpenPOS is our answer to this and we will remain invested in ensuring adoption and future product development.

As part of our stand demonstration all attendee's were given a $20 Gift Card which they could pledge towards one of two worthy organizations. We are pleased to report that due to this we were able to donate $240 to Mage-OS and $460 to Magento Association. 

If you want to see our presentation slides they are available here in PDF

With so many new experiences it was easy to forget the most significant. This was our very first stand at a conference, so it was all so new and unfamiliar. Due to the fantastic organization from Ravi and his team, we felt supported at all times! Nothing was too much trouble.

We opened for Marketplace day on 31 Jan and it's fair to say we were blown away. We had merchants queuing up, experienced the bitter-sweetness watching potential customers walking away since they were waiting too long, but we hope over the 2 days we eventually got to speak to everyone. 

Our stand was an attempt to convey the messaging that Hyvä Themes is now such a fundamental pillar to our business. Like others we would probably not be working with Magento if Hyvä themes had not been born.

Given our talk was towards the end of the day we were expecting a low turnout, we were pleasantly surprised. This was Sean's first talk so an ideal opportunity to get confortable talking on stage. He took to it like a duck to water.

Sean quickly realised the key to confidence on stage is a love and belief in what you are speaking about. 

Our talk explained our OpenPOS product and how it implements an extremely simple concept of Unified Commerce, made easy with the support of the technology 

So what take-aways did we get from the conference and what do we already have in development?

• Kiosk Mode - great idea from a large US merchant, clearly an opportunity for a commercial add-on given the complexity. Alternatively since the core is open source, merchants could choose to implement their own custom Kiosk extension
• Layaways - we spoke to several merchants before and during the conference. Layaways (deposit & reservation) really could be achieved with a pending order and some sort of part payment against the order. Further discussion required.
•  Split Payments - already completed and allows part card part cash payments
• Purchase Order Management - great feature for smaller businesses

We can't end the article without another thanks to Vendic for coming to watch the talk and engaging with us in some great conversations to help steer the product forward to become a more rounded proposition for merchants.

We had a Q&A section at the end of our presentation and of course Vendic jumped at the chance to enrich the presentation with a great question that I had the perfect answer for! It's as if they know what we are thinking!!