Tina and John Pressley knew they wanted to start a business when Tina’s late father helped them land on an idea. A mechanical engineer who became a wheelchair user for the last 10 years of his life, Tina’s father knew how he wanted his chair to operate smoothly. John, who had worked on the computer side of sales and service, has always liked to fix things. So in 2019, Tina and John opened Macarius USA LLC as a repair shop for mobility equipment.
“It started mainly as a service business, offering maintenance like we did on my dad’s power wheelchair,” Tina says. Over the past four years, they’ve expanded into a rental and retail shop as well—now called My Mobility Medics—offering a range of assistive products, from hospital beds for in-home use to lift recliners, scooters, and power wheelchairs.
Now, their son Zane works as their primary technician, making repairs in homes and on site at My Mobility Medics’ 1,000-square-foot showroom. With help from local advertising and a small marketing firm, the business has grown both its digital presence and foot traffic to the store.
Boots-on-the-ground networking has paid big dividends as well. “We decided to focus on the senior market first,” Tina says, estimating there are about 250 senior living facilities in their vicinity of upstate South Carolina.
“I was a corporate trainer by trade, so it’s no problem for me to walk in and propose talking to residents about a subject that interests them,” Tina says. These connections often lead to business for the shop.
My Mobility Medics also benefits from synergy within the local mobility industry, in a practice John calls “co-op-etition”–that is, cooperating with businesses that might otherwise be considered competition. “We have the same customer base, but don’t all offer the same services. So, we refer people back and forth,” Tina says.
When researching POS systems, My Mobility Medics primarily offered on-site repairs and needed an on-the-go device. Tina initially chose Clover for its flexibility. Since then, Clover has become an essential and versatile tool for growing the business in ways Tina and John hadn’t anticipated. “We discovered that there was so much more Clover could do,” Tina says. “Not being a technology person, I found the software really easy to follow. I like having a single system that does 90% of what I want it to do,” Tina adds.
Now, they use Clover to track sales and inventory in-store and on their website and to manage invoices with vendors through the Virtual Terminal. Clover has also saved them money in credit card processing fees–and that means more money in their pockets, as Tina explains.
The Pointy app, which makes the shop’s inventory visible on Google, has also offered an easy and low-lift boost. Pointy links items scanned at checkout back to the shop’s Google Business Profile, driving visibility and customer discovery. “Having more resources that generate business without us having to do anything else is what makes Clover software so useful to us,” says Tina, who’s also experimenting with rewarding their most frequent customers with loyalty discounts.
As My Mobility Medics continues to grow, Tina and John aim to drive more in-store visitors, call-ins, and repair requests. Building trust and collaboration within their community has served their customers–and their business–well so far, especially given that My Mobility Medics aims to help people in need of care and assistance. “It’s a really good partnership we have going,” Tina says.
Read more stories about how Clover is helping merchants scale up and serve their communities.