Tomlinson’s is a multi-generational family-owned and operated holistic pet supplies business based in Austin, Texas. Since opening their doors in 1946, the company has steadily expanded and now operates 18 retail locations throughout central Texas in addition to a popular ecommerce store. The company self-fulfills online orders from their retail storefronts and provides free, same-day delivery to customers living in central Texas.
Tomlinson’s launched their online store on Shopify in 2018. After managing in-store transactions through another point-of-sale (POS) system for years, they decided to unify their sales channels by switching to Shopify POS. This transition helped improve their online and in-store shopping experience, while enabling them to more effectively manage strategic promotional campaigns throughout the year.
Since moving to Shopify POS, Tomlinson’s has seen:
- 56% reduction in average in-store checkout times
- 46% reduction in average number of required taps at checkout
- 32% decrease in new hire training time on POS operations
- Complete automatic application of promotional discounts with zero additional taps required
The Challenge: Inefficient checkout takes a toll
Before they adopted Shopify POS, Tomlinson’s faced several challenges with managing in-store transactions and providing a unified customer experience. The in-store checkout process was inefficient, and applying discounts required extra steps, slowing things down even further. “You had to tap through a number of different tabs on the POS before you could check out a customer,” says Kate Knecht, Owner & Operator of Tomlinson’s. “If discounts needed to be applied, that was yet another tap.” The POS wasn’t integrated with Tomlinsons’ payment processor, so once these steps were completed, the team still had to type the total into their credit card machine and hand it to the customer to ring up their card.
Kate emphasizes how these inefficiencies were taxing over time, saying “When you’re a team member working 40 hours a week and you have to make all these superfluous taps all day every day, it adds up. The process needed to be easier.” Tomlinson’s also wanted to unify their online and in-store sales channels so they could better serve their customers regardless of whether they were shopping digitally or in a physical store. This integration was critical for the team when it came to running promotions and managing their Pet Club Annual Membership program, a core part of their business that provides discounts and other perks to members.
Kate says that when Tomlinson’s began looking for a new POS system, the ability to support the complexities of their membership program was a non-negotiable factor in their decision-making criteria. “We have to be able to track customer profiles and ensure the appropriate profile tags and discounts are associated with each profile for 365 days,” she says. “And the Pet Club discount needs to be automatically applied to each transaction. There can’t be any manual extra steps. It needs to be seamless for the customer and for the team.”
Checkout took too long because each transaction probably had two to three times the amount of taps that should have been required. On busy days, lines would start to pile up.
The Solution: Shopify POS makes checkout a walk in the park
Tomlinson’s decided to address their challenges by switching to Shopify POS. Of course, transitioning to a new POS system is no small task, especially with the success of strategic annual discount periods hinging on them. “We run promotions throughout the year that typically run for about 60 days,” says Kate. “Any interruption would be simply unacceptable.” On top of ensuring a smooth and on-time transition, Tomlinson’s had to be certain that Shopify POS would integrate with their new ERP and legacy software systems. Thankfully, Shopify’s onboarding resources and support helped ensure the team achieved these goals.
“There was no downtime when we made the switch to Shopify POS,” Kate says. “We were able to train in a sandbox environment for a month and a half prior to the launch to allow our team to get used to the system. I was able to ‘soft launch’ our production environment a week prior to going live so stores could test building carts and work out any kinks. That was a huge help.” When launch day arrived, the team was fully prepared, and the improvements over their previous POS system were unmistakable.
“The checkout process happens in a flash,” Kate says. “When I visit stores, I get unprompted feedback from the team telling me how much they’re loving Shopify POS because it’s so easy and intuitive, which also makes the customer experience much more efficient and more pleasant.” On top of its ease of integration and the efficiency gains it made possible, Shopify POS’ extensibility was a critical factor in its success for Tomlinson’s. This was highly apparent in regard to promotions and discounts.
Tomlinson’s enlisted the help of a web design agency to build a custom discount app using Shopify Functions, which allows developers to directly customize Shopify’s backend logic.
“The app gave us the discounting functionality that we didn’t have with our former POS,” says Kate. “Our discounts populate automatically, which saves our team a lot of time and energy.” The customizations enabled by Shopify Functions also ensure Tomlinson’s Pet Club members always receive the membership discounts they’re entitled to, whether they’re shopping online or in-store. “Pet Club support needed to be seamless for our customers and the team, and that was something we were able to build with Shopify Functions,” Kate says.
It used to require multiple steps to apply a percentage off products that were part of a promotion. But with Shopify, the right discounts populate automatically when you add items to the cart. It’s a thing of beauty.
The Results: A purr-fect partnership for business growth
The switch to Shopify POS paid off quickly. Suddenly, configuring discounts was a simple, intuitive process rather than a complicated one. “The Shopify interface on desktop and POS is very straightforward and user-friendly,” says Kate. “You don’t have to be super technically savvy to quickly ensure the right discounts are being applied.” Unifying their sales channels has also led to new customer benefits. “Our customers can log into their online portal and see all their previous purchases, which wasn’t possible before,” she says. “Their Pet Club Membership program is seamlessly managed through Shopify, allowing us to track memberships, apply discounts automatically, and provide a smooth experience for customers and staff.”
The integration of online and in-store sales into Shopify has also helped Tomlinson’s run more effective marketing campaigns, which are planned at the end of the prior year and run in 60 day batches. “For each promotional theme, we choose strategic products and brands that fit those themes,” says Kate. “The customizability of Shopify POS allows us to easily enable or disable discounts for those products based on the current promotion.” She adds that Shopify POS’ native functionalities help the team track the success of their campaigns through the use of discount codes so they can be more strategic about future initiatives.
Looking back on the implementation experience, Kate shares how Shopify surpassed her expectations. “I always knew Shopify could handle our online system because they’d been doing so for years,” she says. “But I thought that if you were a larger retailer, with thousands of SKUs, layers of complexity, and all these legacy programs, then maybe Shopify wouldn’t be the right choice. But when I started to evaluate Shopify POS it became clear how Shopify has been making a lot of investment on the technical backend to be able to support retailers like us.”
She emphasizes the value of Shopify’s flexibility in helping the company achieve their goals, going on to say, “I appreciate how Shopify provides merchants with a suite of tools that you can use to build whatever you need to build rather than dictating what you can or can’t do with your business.” For Tomlinson’s, a company dedicated to doing what’s best for their guests and their pets, their partnership with Shopify has proven to be a remarkable success.
Shopify has done a really good job expanding beyond the direct-to-consumer (DTC) niche into building tools that allow customers of any market vertical to build what they need to serve their business’s unique needs.