Nana & Bird is a luxury women’s fashion and lifestyle boutique, born from the pop-up experiments of lifelong friends, Georgina Koh and Tan Chiew Ling.

When they first opened their retail store, they chose Vend POS. Their experience with the platform, however, left a lot to be desired. Sales and inventory wouldn’t sync between their Shopify site and retail store, checkout was slow, and fragmented customer data made running a membership program challenging.

When the duo were planning their retail store’s renovation, unifying their ecommerce and physical store was a top priority. To ensure they had one reliable system of record to run their entire business, Georgina and Chew Ling chose Shopify POS.

Since switching from Vend to Shopify POS, Nana & Bird has enjoyed:

A quick and efficient store checkout
Less time spent manually reconciling online and store inventory and sales
Centralized reporting for its Shopify site and retail store

The Challenge: Solving inventory discrepancies

When the time came to choose a POS system, they landed on Vend POS. Unfortunately, Georgina and Chew Ling learned about the limitations of POS integrations firsthand.

Vend’s ecommerce POS integration fell short of expectations. As a result, they found themselves spending countless hours manually reconciling both online and store inventory and sales to ensure their records were accurate.

“One of our biggest pain points with Vend POS was having to reconcile inventory and sales. It was impossible to keep our records up to date. After a while, we gave up because it took so much time. Oftentimes, people would buy something online and we couldn’t fulfill the order because we had run out of stock.”

– Georgina Koh, Co-founder, Nana & Bird

The Solution: Inventory management on autopilot

A key advantage of unifying Nana & Bird’s sales channels with Shopify has been real-time inventory updates. Once an item is purchased online or at their store, Shopify acts as their system of record and inventory updates instantly.

Store staff are equipped with an iPhone and the Shopify POS app, which allows them to look up products, item descriptions, stock levels, available colorways and sizes in seconds.

Having all inventory and sales information centralized in Shopify ensures their reporting is reliable and up-to-date with virtually no upkeep required. Staff spend less time counting inventory and reconciling discrepancies, which frees them up to spend more time with customers.

“Shopify POS helps us spend less time reconciling discrepancies between stock levels in the store and online, and more time engaging with our customers.”

– Georgina Koh, Co-founder, Nana & Bird

The result: A unified view of inventory, sales, and customers

Nana & Bird’s switch to Shopify POS helped them take advantage of increased foot traffic once covid lockdown mandates were lifted. “It’s so convenient to have the Shopify POS app installed on an iPad at our checkout counter as well as on iPhones. Staff can check product availability on their phones and accept payments anywhere. It’s helped us manage high-traffic periods better and enhance our customer experience.”

Shopify POS also fuels Nana & Bird’s retention by centralizing purchase history for online and store transactions into customer profiles.

“Having a single view of our customers really helped our membership program,” explains Chiew Ling. “We know how much they spend. We know when they made their last purchase. We know what they bought. We’re also able to leave notes if they want an item that’s out of stock, which makes it easier for us to contact them once we have inventory again.”

While the move to Shopify POS helps Nana & Bird spend less time on operations, the real winners are its customers. Time that would have otherwise been spent managing inventory is re-invested into its customer experience.

“Moving to Shopify POS ensures we spend less time trying to iron out issues and more time engaging with our customers and building the best shopping experience for them.”

– Georgina Koh, Co-founder, Nana & Bird

Steve Colquhoun