Vanguard Awards: POS Systems

With deep roots in pet specialty retail, the companies guiding the POS Systems sector, notably FieldStack and Franpos, are dedicated to supporting retail associates to improve efficiency and expediency. Behind-the-scenes tasks and responsibilities become streamlined and organized, and data provides retailers with direction on taking actionable steps toward sustainable, long-term success and growth. 

A challenge that Franpos recently overcame was scaling with purpose. “As adoption accelerated, the challenge was evolving Franpos into a true operating system for pet retailers without adding complexity,” said CEO and Founder Subodh Gupta. “We strengthened our infrastructure and unified POS, e-commerce, payments, and services into one seamless platform so retailers can grow without friction.”

“For years, we’d hear from independent pet retailers who loved what FieldStack could do but weren’t quite ready for an enterprise-level platform,” said Founder and CEO Brett Wickard. “They were paying what I call an ‘integration tax’—the hidden cost of running disconnected systems that don’t talk to each other: duplicate data entry, blind spots in inventory, lost customer history. We knew we had the answer, because our FieldStack platform already solves that problem. So we asked ourselves: how do we make this available to the folks that need it the most? The answer was PetStack—purpose-built for independent pet retailers, but built on the same proven technology as FieldStack.”

Franpos’ leadership centers around two elements: deep focus and long-term commitment. “Franpos is built specifically for the pet industry, allowing us to innovate faster and solve real challenges across retail, grooming, and services,” Gupta said. “Our leadership is centered on helping independent retailers compete with enterprise-level technology.”

Wickard summed up the key facet that the company’s leadership is built on: “We’re retailers first.” “FieldStack was born out of retail, and that shapes everything—including who we hire,” he expanded. “I look for people who genuinely understand what it’s like to run a store, manage inventory, deal with a difficult holiday season. When your team has that context, you build differently. You solve the right problems instead of the ones that look good on a feature list. I think that’s what keeps us grounded. It’s easy in this industry to chase the next shiny thing. But the folks we work with don’t need shiny—they need reliable, practical tools that make their lives easier.”

Gupta noted that Franpos’ major success has been its strong growth and deeper platform adoption. “Over the past year, we’ve expanded our presence in the pet industry while seeing existing retailers adopt more of the Franpos ecosystem—from e-commerce and subscriptions to integrated payments and marketing tools,” Gupta said. “This deeper adoption has helped our customers operate more efficiently and grow revenue, which we see as the true measure of our success.”

Within the last year, a major success for FieldStack was launching PetStack. “We’ve been working toward it for a long time, and getting it out into the world this year was a big moment for us,” Wickard revealed. “The response has been really positive and we’re excited to get our first PetStack clients live. We’re also rolling out our Services Hub—booking and scheduling for grooming, boarding, training, and daycare. Most independent pet retailers are running their services completely separate from their retail operation. Different systems, different data, different customer records. For a lot of these retailers, services aren’t an add-on. They’re a core part of the business. Bringing it all into one platform means nothing falls through the cracks.”

Gupta said the POS Systems sector will evolve from a transaction system to an intelligence platform. “POS will evolve into the central brain of retail—connecting payments, e-commerce, inventory, and customer engagement,” Gupta said. 

“POS has come a long way from just ringing up a sale,” Wickard said. “The retailers we talk to aren’t looking for a better register—they’re looking for their inventory, customer data, loyalty, e-commerce, and services to actually work together. When those things are connected, your whole business runs the way it should. When they’re not, you feel it every day. Ten years out, the retailers who made that shift early are going to be in a really different position than the ones who waited. The data you build up when everything is connected—that’s a real advantage over time.”