Konditor, the family business founded by Gerhard Jenne in 1993, have been focused on spreading joy through cake for over thirty years. Alongside four bricks-and-mortar locations across London, customers can discover delicious treats through Konditor’s online store, with delivery of celebration cakes available across London and other goods like brownies and biscuits delivered nationwide. Every item is handmade in small batches by Konditor’s passionate bakers using the highest quality ingredients.
While these bakes bring joy year round, the festive season is particularly significant for the brand, with Konditor producing an impressive 150,000 award-winning mince pies.
To manage these seasonal spikes, and with customers flocking to London shops and their growing online offering, Konditor have embraced a unified commerce approach, keeping digital and physical stores connected. As a result, they’ve streamlined their technology stack and transformed their customer experience.
Since moving to Shopify, the brand has seen:
- 13% reduced cost compared with previous point of sale (POS) and ecommerce provider
- 1,000+ sign ups to their new loyalty scheme
- 50% less time spent on admin tasks such as inventory updates
Challenge: Increasing innovation, reducing costs
Before moving to Shopify in 2023, Konditor was using Magento 2 as its ecommerce platform. However, as Tom Rundell, Online Operations Manager, explains, the platform’s high costs, poor functionality and frequent bugs were creating issues: “The security update costs were eating up profits and they weren’t adding value to the customer experience or website – they were just the cost of staying open.”
As a result, Konditor’s development team were spending most of their time fixing issues with the site, rather than actually improving it.
Konditor also had similar problems with their previous POS provider, Tevalis. The software was slow and there were regular issues with the card machine and till. It lacked online and in-store integration, causing inventory management challenges, and the ongoing costs of licensing and support were high. Additionally, the outdated POS system made it difficult to capture customer data in-store. And because the POS system was separate to their ecommerce platform, Konditor had to manage two sets of reporting.
With the hardware reaching the end of its lifecycle, and with the business facing steep prices if they were to continue with Tevalis, Tom and the team took the opportunity to find a solution that would better serve their business and their customers.
We needed to get the right tech stack, the right tools and the right experience for customers – and do it at a sustainable cost for the business. We could see there was an opportunity with Shopify to have both online and our in-store sales on the same platform.
Solution: Shifting to a unified approach
Konditor first migrated to Shopify for ecommerce in 2023. Having been swiftly impressed by site performance and Shopify’s regular feature updates, it was Konditor’s first port of call when they decided to upgrade their POS systems. What’s more, by choosing Shopify, Konditor knew they could drive a unified commerce strategy –with its digital and physical stores working in harmony.
Before using Shopify for unified commerce, Tom and the team faced the tedious task of updating prices or adding a new product range twice – once on the digital storefront and again for their POS system. But now, with Shopify seamlessly integrating in-store and ecommerce channels, this process has been simplified to just a click of a button. In a single swoop, Konditor have effectively halved the time spent on one of their biggest manual admin tasks.
The same frictionless experience goes for reporting and analytics. Rather than being a cumbersome manual task that requires pulling data from two separate platforms and combining them, Konditor now uses Shopify to seamlessly pull together all the insights the team needs in accessible formats, like CSV files. Whether from digital or physical stores, all the information they need is at their fingertips.
We only have a single sales reporting source now – it makes everything much simpler. We don’t miss our old reporting tools because we can get the information more easily and gain insights from it more easily with Shopify.
In-store, Konditor replaced their aging system with Shopify POS on iPads, providing a sleek, modern and flexible experience for both customers and employees. Thanks to a simple setup process, Tom was able to quickly install all the systems himself.
However, Tom also had Shopify on hand to support and offer an additional layer of customisation when needed: “We had our Merchant Success Manager at Shopify helping us and she was a real advocate for our business.” Going above and beyond, the Shopify manager even connected the business with Shopify’s development team, who increased the number of automatic discounts Konditor could add to the system for promotional offers, like a hot drink and a cake together.
With Shopify POS, Konditor’s team can now instantly see photos of the product range, read details on what they are and quickly swipe or tap to update an order. Tom highlights that teams didn’t even require formal training to get up and running: “They could simply see how it works. We gave them a quick demo and they were good to go.”
With everything integrated, Konditor is capturing crucial data across their four stores and digital touchpoints, which fosters a deeper understanding of their customers. Using the insights, Konditor can understand how trends are evolving and identify customer preferences. Central to this is their decision to bring loyalty into their unified commerce approach, integrating reward specialists Leat with Shopify. Previously, Konditor only had a paper loyalty card for in-store customers – which not only frustrated online buyers who couldn’t access the rewards but also meant the business wasn’t gathering any valuable data from the scheme – for example around their preferences or frequency of purchases.
With the new solution, customers can collect points both online and instore, easily view orders or organise refunds. Meanwhile, the business gains new insights into how customers are shopping which means Konditor can better target email marketing and encourage them to return. “It’s simply a much more clean and clear shopping experience both in store and online,” Tom adds.
Result: The perfect ingredients for a successful future
Implementing Shopify POS and unifying it with their digital store has boosted operational efficiency at Konditor and significantly reduced their ecommerce and POS Total Cost of Ownership (TCO). Tom estimates that they’ve already saved 13% on costs compared to their previous provider – driven by savings in security, license fees and transaction fees. And that’s all while significantly improving the customer and employee experience.
We avoided having to spend something like £20,000 a year just to keep our old site up to date from a security perspective, without adding any benefits to the business or customer experience.
Konditor have also already enrolled over 1,000 customers onto its new digital loyalty scheme – creating new marketing opportunities and encouraging repeat business. Those insights are further complemented by integrations with Klaviyo and Gorgias. With this foundation in place, the business will look to grow its loyalty and marketing efforts further, automating processes and adding new incentives like referrals.
Looking ahead, Konditor are set for sustainable growth and a new store opening, all while retaining their focus on providing the very best cakes and a family-business feel for customers.
With physical and digital stores united by Shopify, Konditor knows they have a platform that can support these ambitions – delivering robust insights and a frictionless customer experience, all for a lower total cost. Or in other words, with Shopify at their side, Konditor knows they can have their cake, and eat it.
We’ve got it into a place where it feels set for the next few years – we can focus on the business and our customers and our product without having to worry about our tools.