Originally founded in 1934, Vin Chicago has evolved from a small family wine shop into one of Chicago's most trusted wine retailers. Now in their third generation of family ownership, the company faced a common challenge in modern retail: managing multiple disconnected systems that were driving up costs and hindering growth.
With Shopify, Vin Chicago discovered they could keep orders, inventory levels, and customer profiles in sync across their three retail locations and online store from one unified back office while reducing their total cost of ownership at the same time. The result is an efficient operation that continues to carry on the brand's nearly century-old legacy of wine expertise and personalized service.
Since replatforming from five retail and ecommerce systems to one through Shopify, Vin Chicago has:
- Reduced software costs by a projected 20% through system consolidation
- Saved approximately 30 basis points on credit card processing fees with Shopify Payments
- Achieved 20% year-over-year growth on Cyber Monday
- Freed multiple hours of staff time weekly to focus on growth initiatives rather than technology maintenance or troubleshooting
The Challenge: Unifying a complex retail wine operation
Like many established retailers, Vin Chicago was managing an increasingly complex web of technology systems. "We had four or five different pieces of software if you counted them all," recalls Peter Schwarzbach, owner of Vin Chicago. "Our point of sale (POS) software, our website, our ecommerce backend, and our credit card processing were all separate systems."
This fragmentation led to operational challenges. Each of Vin Chicago's three locations maintained separate inventory systems, making it impossible for customers to see available stock across stores and making problem-solving nearly impossible when issues arose. "If you've got five systems, everybody's pointing a finger at someone else," explains Pete D'Amico, Chief of Staff at Vin Chicago. "Change management was also a huge challenge. If we changed one thing on the website, we might have to change something in the POS and with our other systems. It was very inefficient."
For Vin Chicago, storytelling is also a key cornerstone of the brand. "Direct response to email really drives our business," says Peter. "We write thousands of hours of original material per year in emails where we showcase different wines." When customers wanted to purchase wines from these emails, they were directed to an ordering platform. But this platform was disconnected from Vin Chicago's main website, leading to missed sales opportunities. "Once you were on that site, you weren't able to shop our full catalog," says Peter.
Recognizing the need for a unified solution, Vin Chicago began exploring their options. "We started talking about two years ago—wouldn't it be awesome if we had one piece of software that would combine all the pieces we've got," says Peter. The investigation that followed led them to discover how Shopify could help.
The Solution: Shopify unites product, order, and customer data
After selecting Shopify to help enable their unified commerce vision, the team began putting together an implementation plan, and brought on Shopify Partner Agency ICEE Social for support. With less than three months until the brand's busiest time of year, there was no time to waste.
The team took an iterative approach to implementation, carefully migrating data in phases to ensure business continuity. They began with inventory management, creating a unified system that gave customers real-time visibility across all three stores. This transformed in-store operations by enabling staff to view real-time inventory data and easily fulfill orders from any location with Shopify POS. At the same time, Vin Chicago gained complete visibility of each customers' purchase history whether online or in-store, enabling them to better understand customer preferences and provide more personalized service.
Being able to understand who your customer is and when they're coming in at all times is critical. With Shopify, we now have a system that provides those insights.
Next, they tackled email marketing, developing a custom solution that maintained the simplicity of their email ordering system while connecting it to their full product catalog. "ICEE Social helped us design a new system in Shopify for a custom order form with our featured email items on it," says Peter. "It's very low friction at checkout and allows customers to shop our full website, which wasn't possible before." Overall, the team feels that their Shopify website represents the best digital presence Vin Chicago has ever had. "For the first time in our history, we've captured the magic of Vin Chicago online," says Pete.
The team completed the implementation in under three months from start to finish. The transition was seamless from a customer perspective, and they were fully prepared to meet the demand of the busy holiday season. Common friction points of the past, like customer login issues, were virtually eliminated thanks to the integration of Shop Pay, Shopify's accelerated checkout solution. "The user experience with Shopify is very intuitive," says Peter. "We've had far fewer calls about login issues than we've ever had before."
Shopify's technology, combined with ICEE Social's expertise, gave us a cohesive solution where the fundamentals are correct. Now we can focus on winning in the marketplace.
The Results: Unprecedented cost savings
Just weeks after launching on Shopify online and in-store, Vin Chicago handled their busiest season of the year with remarkable success. "We were able to get through huge days, including Cyber Monday," says Pete. "It was one of our largest volume days ever—it was massive. Sales were up by 20% over the previous year." But the most significant impact of replatforming to Shopify relates to total cost of ownership.
By replacing multiple systems with Shopify's unified platform, Peter estimates the company has reduced their software costs by 20%. Even more impressive are the savings from Shopify Payments, Shopify's integrated payment processing solution.
We used to celebrate if we could save three or four basis points with a new credit card processor. We're saving 30 basis points with Shopify, which is just unheard of. These savings alone nearly offset their entire annual Shopify subscription.
Additionally, the efficiency gains Vin Chicago has realized with Shopify extend beyond direct cost savings. Staff time previously spent managing multiple systems and troubleshooting issues can now be dedicated to growth initiatives. "Instead of just plugging leaks or fixing the boat, our time is now much more sales-focused," explains Pete. "That's huge."
Looking ahead, Vin Chicago sees even more opportunity to power their unified commerce strategy with Shopify. "We really like what we've got and we haven't even started tapping into Shopify's full potential. There are so many tools that we haven't even looked at yet, and we feel like we're already ahead."
Shopify is the magical software platform that we had fantasized about for almost ten years. Not only have we unified the five different retail and ecommerce systems into one, we're also presenting ourselves online better than ever before with a website that truly represents who we are.
