Canadian Retailer - Fall 2015 - 27

the store's owner knows his product. Located in a sub-

to-implement solutions. Square and Lightspeed offer
urban borough outside of the city, the store has sold up- devices to facilitate in-store mobile sales, and online
scale men's clothing for 25 years. They take risks with marketplaces like ebay and etsy offer other venues
the merchandise, too, offering experimental products where retailers can reach customers. And most of these
usually only found in the trendiest big city shops.
companies compete in multiple areas, offering soluBut the store's reluctance to embrace technologies to tions for digital stores and in-store sales.
improve its business puzzles Robin Smith.
"It's a conundrum," says Smith, co-founder and gen- roadblock: integration
eral manager of sales and marketing at Virtual LogisMost technology vendors trumpet the simplicity of
tics, a retail technology provider.
their systems but not every retailer finds setting up
The store engages customers through social media, and running online stores easy. Rapid changes in the
but its back-end technology is ancient. They still do technology market generate new problems for retailtheir accounting through QuickBooks and they won't ers to solve.
bring in inventory management technology to add efThe key roadblock for many independent retailers
ficiency to the operations.
is integration. Many of the underlying technology-
Without technology to automate inventory oper- the back-end systems, like their point-of-sale systems
ations, the store limits its growth potential, says Smith. and inventory systems-rely on antiquated technolo"It's a complex world," he says. "You need automation. gies and programs. Many retailers still use Microsoft
You can't just hire people to pound a keyboard."
Excel as their inventory management system. DisparThe men's store isn't an outlier. Many retailers ate systems don't easily integrate into one another, and
haven't updated their systems or moved online. It's third party technologies or human labour is required
a headscratcher considering how much web and mo- to transfer data between the systems.
bile influence purchasing. Online sales accounted for
"If you don't have good back-end systems, you can't
$13-billion in 2014, with sales expected to grow by add new platforms easily," says Smith. "Trying to feed
$3-billion in 2015 and another $3-billion in 2016.
data to all these platforms is difficult if not impossible."
With a surplus of technology
options on the market, never "if your business is predicated on buying product, marking it up
before has the opportunity to
and selling in a store, what's the difference today with the store
change the business technologies been so easy-especially for next door? Until you define that, technology is irrelevant."
smaller players who want to get
- roBiN smith, Virtual Logistics
online, expand their businesses
and compete with larger players. Yet many aren't.
getting it done
In spite of the challenges facing retailers, many inthen and now
dependent merchants have found their way. One suc"Retail has seen an explosion of technology," says cess is Zane Aburaneh, owner of Zane, an accessories
Kevin Butler, Director of Marketing at OrderDynam- store with an online sales channel and stores in Vanics. One only needs to look at web stores from fifteen couver and Toronto. The physical stores generate a laryears ago to see the change. Back then, only adventur- ger portion of the store's sales, but at least a quarter
ous retailers dove into online selling. Those that did of these sales come via the online store, as customers
often wrote code themselves.
browse the e-store and visit the physical store to make
"Not long ago e-commerce sites were the under-the- a purchase.
radar pet projects of the tech department," says Butler.
Aburaneh uses two main technology providers, one
Websites were, at best, ugly (you might call them for the online sales, and one for in-store POS. The two
"handcrafted") business card sites advertising the technology providers don't integrate nicely-"The upstore's location and newspaper flyers. Over time, static dating is all inconsistent," he says-and so the store staff
webpages transformed into stores as reticent consum- juggles data between the systems rather than spending
ers became more willing to make purchases online.
additional investments on a third party integrator.
Now, a suite of specialized services exist for retailFor now, the system works, even though the store
ers who want them. Retailers wanting a sales-ready manually manages data at the end of each day. But
website can tap into packages offered by Shopify, Ma- such a system limits growth opportunities.
gento, 3Dcart, OrderDynamics and others. Shipping
"If online picks up, I have to figure out how I'm going
software? No problem. Order Cup, Ship Station, Pro- to manage [data between systems]," Aburaneh says. He
cess Weaver, Virtual Logistics, and others have easy- might commit all services to one vendor, even though

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Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Canadian Retailer - Fall 2015