Giving your customer the option to shop your brand through whatever channel they want is no longer just a trend. Omnichannel selling is now the norm for many innovative retailers, direct-to-consumer and legacy brands alike.
Omnichannel is a customer-focused marketing strategy that delivers a seamless retail experience to buyers as they move through different marketing channels to make a purchase. Having more than one channel option for your customer is important for acquisition and retention, but it’s also lucrative for your business.
A unified commerce platform can help you manage and integrate multiple sales channels for a seamless customer experience in real time, optimizing your inventory management and keeping customer needs front and center.
Here, we’ll go through nine of the biggest names in retail today, how they approach omnichannel selling to their customers, and what you can learn from them.
1. MyFitFoods
Personal trainer and founder Mario Mendias created MyFitFoods to solve a common problem: healthy meals are the cornerstone of fitness results, but not everyone has time to prepare them.
From a single vision to “help people achieve their fitness goals through convenient, nutritious meals,” the company has quickly grown to nine locations across three states and is on track to surpass $50 million in revenue.
With consistent, centralized data and a robust tech foundation, MyFitFoods is primed to scale while keeping the customer experience front and center. Whether a purchase happens in-store or online, customers receive a fast, reliable checkout and fresh, healthy meals.
Key takeaways:
- Unified omnichannel experience: By consolidating all operations into one platform (Shopify), MyFitFoods eliminated tech fragmentation. Now everything from in-store POS to online ordering feeds into a single system. This helped the team gain a 360-degree view of their business and focus on delivering exceptional customer service.
- Faster transactions: After replacing a slow, crash-prone system, MyFitFoods cut in-store checkout times from 180 seconds to 60 seconds. That means a happier customer base, smoother service, and more sales during peak hours.
- Membership and customer loyalty programs: MyFitFoods’ Fit Club offers 20% discounts to returning subscribers. With a unified system, staff can instantly apply discounts and recognize repeat customers, creating a frictionless experience that encourages brand loyalty.
2. Allbirds
Allbirds is one of the direct-to-consumer (DTC) and omnichannel selling darlings for a reason. The sustainable footwear brand is known for caring for their product’s impact on the climate and fashion.
This certified B Corp from New Zealand began with a simple design made from natural materials. The online brand has since blossomed into a multi-location retailer offering footwear styles for any age and gender.
Key takeaways:
- Buy online, pick up in-store (BOPIS): Allbirds began as an online-only offering, but became a global retailer with stores in North America, Europe, and Asia. If a particular shoe isn’t in stock at a retail location, shoppers can order it online and pick it up in-store, free from the delivery cost and the wait that comes with shipping.
- Personalized customer engagement: Allbirds will send customers personalized recommendations of new products based on their shopping history. This keeps customers coming back.
- Online, everywhere: It’s difficult for brands that start online to maintain momentum, but Allbirds is flourishing through their presence on multiple social channels. They’re active in influencer collabs, selling through social media and email marketing campaigns. An important way to keep digital content fresh is by creating it specifically for individual channels, so Allbirds partners with influencers specific to Instagram and TikTok.
3. Glamnetic
Glamnetic began as the startup dream of artist Ann McFerran. The magnetic eyelash brand founder worked to perfect a product that would be easy to put on and take off. The brand is expanding with their press-on nails that are affordable, long-lasting, and easy to remove. While they started as an ecommerce retailer, the brand quickly expanded their omnichannel strategy, selling their products in large national retailers like Sephora and Target.
Key takeaways:
- Social media ads: Glamnetic ads are everywhere online, and that’s a good thing. Social media paid ads that pop up in-feed with compelling videos and content on the brand’s products make it hard to look away. From there, it’s an easy few clicks to get researching, purchasing the product, or finding a nearby retailer.
- Compelling founder: Not all founders need to be front and center of their brand’s story, but it can be a compelling part of the brand. Ann founded the brand in part to create a product that was easier to wear, and it blossomed into millions of orders. Ann genuinely loves the products of Glamnetic, which is great social proof to buyers.
4. Lazy Oaf
British brand Lazy Oaf isn’t just jumping on the trend of aughts revival clothes—they were there from the start. Since 2001, the apparel brand has offered inventive, playful products like clothes, accessories, and houseware in unique colors and designs, and with an eye to keeping things youthful.
Key takeaways:
- Social commerce: Integrating with Instagram’s selling features is a crucial way for brands to keep customers moving along the buyer’s journey. Lazy Oaf has nearly one million followers, so having a shop on the main page is important. Buyers who like the brand’s social presence can easily purchase a product featured in the feed with a few simple clicks.
- Brand responsibility: Lazy Oaf establishes their impact on the climate and brings in other social and cultural points to ensure buyers understand what the brand has to offer. Many of their staff are female-identifying, and the brand is female founded. It participates in slow fashion, provides key information on suppliers, and how the product is developed from an idea to fabric to a completed piece. Pulling back the curtain to show a brand’s ethics is an important touchpoint of an omnichannel strategy.
- Oafworld: Adding a media arm to your brand’s offerings is a smart way to create a seamless and integrated customer experience. For Lazy Oaf, that’s Oafworld: curated content including artist interviews, visual editorials, and news for Lazy Oafers to catch up on. It focuses on the brand’s narrative and offering, and showcases the other creative aspects that exist outside of the products.
5. Steve Madden
Steve Madden is an iconic ’90s footwear brand that began selling chunky platforms. They offer a variety of shoes, handbags, accessories, and more, and the company has a number of other brands under their portfolio.
Key takeaways:
- Return online purchases in-store: As a brand that began as an in-person retailer, it’s important for Steve Madden to keep that connection for buyers. For those who prefer to buy online, the brand offers a personalized shopping experience across channels, allowing customers to return items however they choose. This can mean in-store if that’s easiest.
- Excel at customer service: Steve Madden offers excellent customer service across their channels, including a live chat on their website for customers to ask about buying, shipping, and return information.
- Buy now, pay later (BNPL). One buying trend becoming more mainstream every day is buy now, pay later. Offering services like Afterpay, Klarna, and Affirm for your customers, like Steve Madden does, increases the chance of a seamless, complete purchase. Customers won’t have to stop to think if they can pay the whole amount now, but rather can go from cart to third-party system to a complete order, knowing their payments are spread out to make paying seem a little easier.
6. Monos
Inspired by the Japanese concept of mono no aware, an appreciation for beauty in fleeting moments, Monos brings minimalist, design-forward luggage to travelers worldwide. Though the brand began as a digital-native venture with four online storefronts, Monos envisioned a seamless blend of online and brick-and-mortar experiences, and used Shopify to make it happen.
Monos runs both ecommerce and retail operations with minimal in-house oversight, freeing the team to focus on customer satisfaction and brand growth.
Key takeaways:
- Multiple online storefronts with offline extension: Monos manages four ecommerce sites using Shopify, serving travelers across different regions. With Shopify POS, Monos integrates inventory, sales channels, and customer data, maintaining one source of truth wherever purchases happen.
- Buy in-store, ship home: Staff can offer an in-store experience while shipping bulky items directly to the shopper’s address. This is perfect for busy travelers who don’t want to carry large luggage out of the store. Whether a product is at a warehouse or a different store, associates can quickly locate it and arrange delivery, meeting customers’ timelines before the next big trip.
- Deeper customer connections: Store associates have instant access to each shopper’s purchase history, ensuring personalized recommendations, no matter where or how they first discovered Monos.
- One system for physical and online retail: With Shopify POS, Parachute consolidated multiple fragmented systems into a single platform. This allowed them to streamline inventory, promotions, and checkout processes.
- BOPIS for customer convenience: Shoppers can buy online and pick up in a physical store, making it easier than ever for them to snag the perfect bedding set on their own schedule,leading to 5x growth in BOPIS revenue over four years.Customer profiles: Every store interaction ties back to the customer’s Shopify profile, so Parachute can follow up with relevant product suggestions or simply check in on that new duvet.
- Consistent branding: From a customer’s first website visit to in-store touch and feel, Parachute keeps their messaging cohesive. They show the same style, quality, and promise of comfort throughout every channel
- Unified data: With Shopify, DVF’s stylists can see a customer’s entire shopping journey—whether online or in-store—at a glance. That includes sizing preferences, past purchases, and even style notes, all in a single profile.
- Personalized clienteling: Personal stylists in the New York City flagship use advanced customer insights to offer one-on-one guidance, forging deeper relationships with regulars and new visitors alike.
- Targeted follow-ups: Stylist teams use apps like Endear (integrated with Shopify) to segment customers based on shopping behaviors, reaching out about restocks, launches, and pre-launch parties that match individual tastes.
- One single customer view: Whether a customer has only shopped online or is a frequent in-store visitor, their entire purchase history and loyalty points are stored in a single Shopify profile. Store associates can instantly see sizing preferences and past items, perfect for guiding new clients or helping gift-givers find just the right fit.
- On-the-spot fulfillment: Ship to customer helps close the sale even if an item isn’t in-store. About 20% of weekly transactions use this option, ensuring customers get what they want without leaving empty-handed.
- Consistent promotions: When Mizzen+Main runs omnichannel marketing promotions, they apply them uniformly online and in-store. The team uses Shopify’s POS tile feature so staff can quickly tap to apply discounts, no complicated workarounds required.
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7. Parachute
Ariel Kaye launched Parachute with a simple conviction: everyone deserves a high-quality, welcoming home environment. Spotting a gap between luxury homewares and affordable shopping experiences, she built Parachute to combine thoughtful design with an easy buying journey, blending online convenience and in-store comfort.
Initially running on a custom tech stack, Parachute found it challenging to scale, unify sales channels, and deliver consistent customer experiences. The move to Shopify helped them refocus on creating a cohesive, seamless journey for their customers.
Key takeaways:
8. Diane Von Furstenberg
Since launching the iconic wrap dress in 1973, Diane von Furstenberg (DVF) has been synonymous with bold prints, timeless silhouettes, and women’s empowerment.
Today, DVF serves shoppers through global boutiques, a flagship store in Manhattan’s Meatpacking District, and a booming ecommerce channel in 70+ countries. DVF’s unified approach is raising the bar for clienteling in luxury retail. By merging online and offline data under one platform, they empower stylists to deliver a red-carpet experience every time a customer walks through the door or clicks “Add to Cart.”
Key takeaways:
👉 Read Diane Von Furstenberg’s story.
9. Mizzen+Main
Mizzen+Main blends performance fabric with classic menswear design, creating dress shirts and apparel that look sharp without sacrificing comfort.
While the brand made its name online, it quickly embraced physical retail, striking wholesale deals with major retailers and opening 11 stores across the US. Unifying both in-store and online shopping channels with Shopify, Mizzen+Main has unlocked steady, year-over-year omnichannel growth.
Key takeaways:
Become an omnichannel retailer with Shopify
Adopting a truly connected strategy, from mobile app development to rewards program integration, isn’t optional. It’s the new standard for retail success. An ecommerce platform like Shopify makes it easier to unify all your commerce channels so your business runs on a single, centralized system.
With Shopify, you can streamline inventory management in real time, access unified customer profiles no matter where they shop, and keep your messaging consistent across every channel. These capabilities help you build the seamless experiences your customers expect, whether you’re launching a new product line, opening a popup shop, or expanding into new markets.
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Omnichannel retailers FAQ
Who is the best omnichannel retailer?
Warby Parker is one of the best omnichannel retailers for its in-store, online, and social media strategy, offering a seamless customer experience.
Who are the leaders in omnichannel retail?
Leaders in omnichannel retail include Allbirds, Rothy’s, and Steve Madden.
What is an omnichannel retailer example?
An example of an omnichannel retailer includes Sephora, which sells online via a website and mobile app, and in-store.
Is the omnichannel approach outdated?
Omnichannel is not an outdated method of marketing and selling products. It’s becoming an important way for all retailers to operate their business by offering many touchpoints in a customer’s journey to buying a product. Omnichannel customers are nearly twice as likely to shop more than customers who use one channel.