NL
Branch
Interieur
Products
MultiShop
Location
Store
The Netherlands
The Netherlands is a real entrepreneurial country. Entrepreneurs are often people who like getting things done; the “you have an idea and just start” type of people.
And before you know it you will be successful! The dream of every entrepreneur. But growth and success also come with challenges. Challenges that call for adjustments within your company and working methods, before they become problems.
The challenge of growing in the retail industry
Growth of your own company is important if you want to (continue to) earn a living with it. But once that growth has taken place, it can throw a spanner in the works. Before you know it, you will work a little harder to keep overview. You are correcting mistakes instead of selling your services or products. And then, despite your hard work, you see the growth of your company stall. That is, if you don’t get there on time.
Sandra is a successful entrepreneur. Along with her retail business, she saw the amount of mistakes grow. She knew something had to be done before she would lose control.
DeWoonWinkel.nl challenge
Sandra and her partner unsuspectingly started an entrepreneurial career when they started building their own bungalow. They were asked more and more if they could also build for others and jumped into that gap. What started as a private project grew in only three years to three companies; rental of bungalows, a furniture store and a residential outlet. Real entrepreneurial success.
But still, Sandra started run into some thresholds. And that had everything to do with the successful growth of online and offline furniture stores. She began to lose track, saw the number of wrong transactions increase and was working very hard to keep up. Something had to be done. She asked for help and was directed to Online Distributeur by Lightspeed.
We often see the problems Sandra encountered with growth and expansion. The solution is tailor-made automation; our field. And so we got to work together.
“The collaboration went very well. Communication was fast and direct. Everything you really want in such a process.”
The Online Distributor solution
Sandra was referred to us via the Lightspeed POS system. A logical step, because we have been working closely with Lightspeed for more than 5 years and know all the ins and outs of this system. In addition, we have already developed several tools for Lightspeed that help you take your company to the next level. And that’s what Sandra needed and wanted.
Together we delved into the companies and business processes with the aim of clarifying its challenges and wishes. This step is very important as it’ll allow us to build tools / technical links that should help with what you’re were dealing with and deliver the results you want to see.
Together with De Woonwinkel, we arrived at two important wishes.
1. As the owner of two different furniture store concepts (DeWoonWinkel and Houten Meubel Outlet) I only want to work with 1 retail organization and therefore 1 checkout system, so that I have overview, can work faster at the checkout and have less manual work and administration.
2. As the owner of both an online and offline furniture store and an online and offline outlet, I want the stocks of everything to be linked, so that there is always a real-time overview of the stock and therefore incorrect transactions are drastically reduced.
Tailor-made Multishop
Sandra’s wishes could be largely resolved with the implementation of MultiShop. MultiShop is a tool, specially built for Lightspeed, that provides a link between multiple webshops to one warehouse or stock point.
The only challenge that Tim, our IT specialist, still had was creating 1 retail organization so that 1 stock would indeed be created to which the various web shops could be linked.
In doing so, he had to take into account the different sales concepts of the outlet on the one hand and the furniture store on the other. Not an easy assignment, but it worked very well within the existing tool of MultiShop.
I like action; just do it, clear steps. And immediate results. You get that at Online Distributeur.
Mission accomplished
Sandra now has 1 POS system and 1 real-time stock for 4 different stores. The system is in service of her, instead of the other way around. And that offers peace and time. Although… when I ask whether she has time to spare now, she says, “It’s hard to say, because we are growing enormously so it is very busy!” Mission accomplished, we think.
