We sell at local markets. That is where this started.
If you've ever set up a table at a Saturday craft market, you already know the small problem that became the reason we built FlipTag. The price you charge depends on where you are standing. A ceramic mug that sells for $28 at a community market is closer to $45 in a gallery, and on a slow Sunday in November you might want to drop everything 15% just to move inventory. None of that is unusual. It is how in-person selling has always worked.
The annoying part is the price tag itself.
Sticker, paper tag, hand-lettered sign, fancy chalkboard, it does not matter. The tag is a snapshot of one decision you made, glued to the product. When the decision changes, the tag is wrong. So you reprint, restick, peel, scratch out, or apologize at the table. You do this enough times and you start asking why a piece of paper is the part of your business that decides what you can change and when.
We tried the obvious workarounds. A spreadsheet on a phone you hold up at checkout. A QR code that points to a Google Doc. A laminated price list taped to the table. They all sort of work. None of them feel right when a customer is standing two feet from you trying to decide if they want the thing.
So we built FlipTag.
The idea is small on purpose. One QR tag per product. The tag never changes. The price behind it can. You scan, the customer's phone shows the current price, the description, photos, and whatever else you want them to see. You change the price from your phone in five seconds and every tag for that product updates instantly. Reprinting is not part of the loop anymore.
A few things fell out of that idea that we did not expect when we started.
The first is that customers actually like scanning. They get to take their time, look at the photos, read the description, and make the call without standing in line at the register. The interaction is calmer for everyone.
The second is that the same tag works across venues. The mug at the Saturday market and the mug in the gallery are the same physical object with the same physical tag. You set venue-specific prices in the app, and the right one shows up depending on which storefront you have active. Nothing on the product changes. The tag is reusable across seasons, locations, and price strategies.
The third, and this is the one we underestimated, is that having a real product page per item changes how people browse. They scan one tag, they see the product, and a tap later they are looking at everything else you make. A market table becomes a small storefront. People shop the way they shop online, except they are also looking at the actual object on the actual table.
We are building FlipTag for the people we already know. Makers, market vendors, card dealers, vintage and resale sellers, gallery shows, pop-ups, tasting rooms, anyone who shows up in person and needs the price tag to keep up. We are a small team based in Canada, and we use FlipTag at our own tables. If something annoys you, the odds are good it annoys us too, and there is a real human at [email protected] who will read what you send.
If you sell in person and any part of this sounds like your problem, we would love to have you try it.
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