Case Studies5 min read15 February 2024

Shopify POS Integration for a Multi-Site UK Retailer

Jamie Chen

Lead Developer

A five-location independent retailer had disconnected till systems and no unified stock view. We integrated Shopify POS across all sites, unifying inventory and customer data.

An independent gift and homeware retailer with five stores across the North West had built their online presence on Shopify years ago, but their in-store operation ran on a legacy till system with no connection to their website. Stock levels were manually synced on a weekly basis, online orders frequently oversold products that had sold in-store, and there was no shared customer record between channels.

The Integration Brief

The retailer needed a unified commerce system: one inventory, one customer record, one reporting view across all five physical locations and the online store. Shopify POS Pro, combined with their existing Shopify online store, was the natural solution — eliminating a separate system and consolidating everything into one platform.

The Migration

The project involved migrating approximately 4,800 active SKUs from the legacy till system to Shopify, setting location-specific inventory quantities, and configuring hardware (Shopify card readers, receipt printers, and barcode scanners) across all five sites. The migration was staged: two stores first, then the remaining three after a two-week parallel-run period.

4,800 SKUs migrated with location-specific stock counts
Customer records (12,000+) merged and imported to Shopify
Gift card balances migrated from legacy system
Staff permission levels configured per location
End-of-day reporting set up per store and consolidated

Inventory Management

With unified inventory, the retailer could now offer ship-from-store for online orders, fulfilling orders from the closest store with available stock rather than relying solely on their central warehouse. This reduced fulfilment time by an average of 1.2 days and cut postage costs by routing orders to geographically convenient stores.

Unified Customer Data

For the first time, the retail team could see a customer's full purchase history — whether they'd bought online or in-store. This enabled meaningful personalisation in their email marketing (previously blinded to in-store purchase behaviour) and allowed staff to look up a customer's purchase history at the till.

Key insightOnline overselling dropped to zero within the first week of go-live. Previously, the team was processing 8–12 oversell cancellations per week.