Prep Cookshop & Richard Dare
With a 12-year career in Fashion behind her, Holly Wilson decided to change her workstyle after having her second child, she was not expecting to start a cook shop.
For the foodies of Stoke Newington, buying cooking implements or bakeware meant the Pound Shop or going into central London. Holly rightly saw an obvious gap in the market. It took 12 months to find the right unit and in 2014 Prep was launched. She has since expanded her business by buying established cookware store Richard Dare in Primrose Hill. Holly is a long term Vend user with a native connection to Xero.
The Problem
The COVID lockdown gave Holly the chance to evaluate how she could future proof her business. Like many retailers, she recognised that selling online was a must have and selected Shopify as her eCommerce platform. However, to be successful Holly had to find a way to have a single online shop which would support selling stock from both of her shops. This presented a challenge as each brick and mortar shop was actually a separate business. Each business has its own Vend POS and Inventory of stock, and each needing to maintain its own set of business accounts in Xero.
This impacted on PREP & Richard Dare as follows:
- Selling on third party marketplaces like Trouva needed– knowledge of up to the minute stock levels. With two business in different locations and online sales this was near impossible.
- Their previous systems caused innumerable stock issues as data transfer between systems used spreadsheets
- Managing the data separately for both businesses increased the likelihood and consequences of human error.
Implementation
TIDEConnects was deployed to not only automate the synchronisation of product, stock and sales between Vend and Shopify.
Other features provided by TIDEConnects include:
- Ensuring that Shopify could just sell from one combined catalogue of products and stock representing both businesses
- All sales are written back to one location in Vend for centralised reporting
- Tagging sales made in Shopify with the information Holly needs to be able to identify which stock needs to be transferred from which store to fulfil customer purchases.
- When Stock and sales records are transferred to the correct business, a separate VAT account can be maintained through the Vend to Xero connection.
The Result
Since December 2020, TIDEConnects was used by Prep/Richard Dare to get the new Shopify website ready for launch. Almost 80,000 stock updates were automatically processed and 40,000 product updates have been passed to Shopify, including new listings, new images, new descriptions and new prices.
“I picked TIDEConnects as over anyone else they made me feel confident as they listened and communicate. From the beginning TIDEConnects have made it their job to understand my business and its complexities. If I’ve had a stumbling block, they’ve fixed it. They’ve saved time, my sanity, and removed the pain and confusion of dealing with systems that don’t respond to my business needs and enabled me finally to migrate to my own websites. Having a functioning, responsive website with accurate stock levels, especially in these uncertain times, could save my businesses. TIDEConnects makes my businesses feel safe.” Holly Wilson, Owner Prep Cookshop and Richard Dare