Kate's Equestrian - Equine Retailer Case Study
Kate from Kate's Equestrian was selling on her website, eBay and Amazon, which was ok until her sales started to grow so much that she couldn't keep up with updating her stock. Find out how Connect, our multichannel EPoS system, has helped Kate manage her stock from one central place and run her business more efficiently whilst saving time.
About Kate's Equestrian Supplies
Kate's Equestrian Supplies was launched in October 2011 and they have been an Intelligent Retail customer since 2015. The owner Kate Lawrance has over 25 years of experience within the equestrian industry including working as Head Groom for International Show Jumper Di Lampard and obtaining 3rd place in the British Equestrian Federation Groom Of The Year! Kate now puts all her time and energy into making Kate's Equestrian Supplies a successful independent business and her vast experience and knowledge is a great hit with her customers!
Kate's aim is supply good quality and affordable riding equipment suited to all budgets from entry level upwards. Customer service is very important to Kate and is always on hand if there is a problem or if advice is needed on any products. Given her experience in the industry she tries to be helpful to everyone, particularly to newcomers to the equestrian world.
Kate's Equestrian Supplies has a showroom and one of our responsive eCommerce websites where people can buy equestrian clothing and footwear. People can also book a riding hat and body protector fitting, or a visit to her showroom.
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The Challenge
When Kate joined Intelligent Retail back in 2011 the business had grown to such a point that it couldn't grow any further with their old system. Kate explains:
"I was selling on my website, eBay and Amazon which was ok until sales grew so much that I couldn't keep up with updating my stock etc." So, I looked around for a system which would allow sales to grow while reducing the amount of work."
Kate's Equestrian Supplies needed a system that gave them the ability to manage their marketplace channels and website from one place.
The Solution
Kate knew that she needed a system that would allow sales to grow while reducing the amount of work and she came across Intelligent Retail and never looked back.
Connect's multichannel software for independent retailers fitted the bill perfectly. The business itself is mostly online - selling through an Intelligent Retail responsive website, eBay and Amazon – with all stock, marketplace listings and order fulfilment handled through Connect's multichannel centre and fulfilment centre.
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The Outcome
Now, when Kate gets orders for horse riding clothes and accessories from Amazon, eBay or her own website, they download to Connect and the stock quantities are updated automatically across all the other channels. Reducing the amount of manual work required logging in and out of different systems to update them. Giving her more time to spend on helping her customers and growing her business.
Intelligent Retail have given Kate's Equestrian Supplies lots of features that make running a physical showroom, marketplaces and eCommerce website smoother and more efficient, as well helping to grow her sales online.
Technology
Connect is a Windows based EPoS software that requires no expensive servers to operate. Using ‘Smart Client’ architecture the software is installed on the local machine and uses the internet to back up securely, apply updates and talk to any online sales channels such as eBay, Amazon, or your website. Connect is not reliant on the internet to operate making this the most resilient solution for retail.
Customers
Improve customer service and increase repeat business. Ensure your customers feel valued to encourage an increased customer spend and bring customers back to your store.
Connect EPoS has a centralised customer database which is fully GDPR compliant and is populated both manually in-store and automatically when customers buy online. This database allows access to data powering a suite of rich reporting tools which enable you to make the most of stored customer and sales records. You can view and report on your most valuable customers and tag customers against certain products or product groups for effective marketing.
You can also store an image against a customer record which is great if you have membership schemes to manage. The system can produce invoices, statements, quotations and can effectively manage account customers too.
Refine by menu
Refine by is a super-powerful and intuitive menu system that helps replicate the shopping experience in a store. Customers shopping online will usually have an idea of what they are looking for and if this were to be replicated in a shop, they would simply head to the aisle in question or ask member of staff to help then locate the right products.
Online reviews integration
Market research specialist’s iPerceptions found that people are 63% more likely to buy from an eCommerce site that has user reviews than one without.
Change multiple products
Mass change product attributes for efficient working.
Alternative image mouse hover
Allows you to showcase your products as customers. Simply hover over a thumbnail image to display an alternative image. Sell more products by quickly showing additional images or other information about your products.
Quick 'add'
Customers can select product options and add to their basket from the product listing page, which means less clicks for customers and easier to add items to the basket! Great for fashion and footwear retailers or anyone that has lots of options.
Click and collect
Allows customers to select the most convenient store for them to collect their items. It also supports displaying stock availability at each of your stores and where possible, offers the ability the find the closest store to the customer's location.
