When Aviator Nation's Venice Beach storefront opened in 2006, managing retail technology wasn't part of the California cool lifestyle brand's DNA. But by 2023, with 18 retail locations and a thriving online business, the brand faced a modern retail dilemma: their fragmented commerce systems couldn't deliver the seamless experience customers expected.
Its website ran on Adobe Commerce while their 18 retail locations used Lightspeed for point-of-sale, two disconnected systems that made true omnichannel retail impossible. Basic operations required complex workarounds: customers couldn't return store purchases online, store associates couldn't access warehouse inventory, and even simple website updates took days.
This fragmentation isn't just an operational headache—it's increasingly becoming a competitive liability. Today's shoppers expect seamless experiences across every touchpoint, whether they're browsing online, shopping in-store, or moving between channels. Meeting these expectations demands a fundamental shift in how retailers operate.
Why traditional retail operations fall short
The challenge starts with fragmented data. Most retailers maintain 7–10 different systems just to operate their business: separate platforms for ecommerce and point-of-sale, standalone systems for customer data, and different solutions for inventory management. Each system maintains its own customer database, inventory records, and order history—and each integration creates another point of potential failure.
The costs compound quickly. Beyond direct technology expenses, retailers with siloed operations face:
- Multiple database licenses and ongoing maintenance
- Continuous integration development and updates
- Staff time spent reconciling data between systems
- Lost sales from incomplete customer insights
- Missed opportunities for inventory optimization
More importantly, disconnection makes it impossible to deliver the seamless experiences customers expect. When a loyal online shopper visits a store, sales associates can't see their purchase history or preferences. When an item is out of stock online, there's no way to check if it's available in a nearby store.
The importance of unified data in omnichannel operations
The term "omnichannel operations" means managing all sales channels, customer data, and backend processes as one cohesive system. It's the operational foundation that lets retailers provide seamless customer experiences across physical stores, ecommerce, mobile apps, and marketplaces.
At its core is a shared infrastructure where point of sale and ecommerce exist on the same platform. All components share the same data model and infrastructure: order management, fulfillment, and analytics all operate from one authoritative source.
This enables instant inventory synchronization across all channels—when a product sells in store, online inventory updates automatically. When a customer makes a purchase online, their profile updates immediately across all touchpoints.
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Integrated commerce operating systems like Shopify bring data together from all the essential tools, whether it’s targeting data from Shopify Audiences or third-party apps. Store associates can sell products that aren't physically present through endless aisle shopping. Customers can buy online and pick up in-store. Most importantly, a shopper's relationship with the brand remains consistent across every touchpoint.
These capabilities drive measurable results. According to research from an independent consulting firm, retailers using unified commerce platforms see their operations transform across every dimension:
- Operating costs drop by 22% compared to businesses running disconnected systems
- Customer acquisition costs drop by up to 50% through better targeting
- Repeat purchase likelihood rises by 77% when using unified checkout solutions like Shop Pay
- Annual sales grow by 8.9% on average, with quarterly omnichannel growth reaching 150% year-over-year
For Pepper Palace, adopting such a streamlined commerce platform enabled rapid expansion. By unifying their operations, they eliminated 60% of their middleware costs, saving $20,000 annually. More significantly, they could open 60 new locations in a single year—something impossible with their previous approach.
These efficiency gains extend throughout the organization. Fashion brand Oak + Fort reduced headquarter staff time by 50 hours per week through unified order management. Its 42 retail locations saved approximately 80 hours per week in shop floor employee time—equivalent to 0.4 full-time employees per location. These savings allow staff to focus on serving customers instead of managing systems.
The core components of successful omnichannel operations
While multichannel retail means selling through different channels, unified commerce represents a fundamental shift in retail operations. To establish this foundation, retailers need to focus on five key operational components that drive success.
Data collection
First-party customer data remains far easier to capture online than in-store. Asking for a customer’s contact information at checkout adds friction, leading many brands to opt out of collecting this valuable data—and sacrificing both re-engagement opportunities and personalization capabilities.
Little Words Project demonstrates how this works in practice with Shopify. The bracelet brand needed a way to collect customer emails across their 14 retail locations without disrupting their signature personalized shopping experience.
By implementing automated email capture at checkout through their unified POS system, they increased in-store email capture rates by over 20% on average, with some locations seeing improvements up to 95%. More importantly, it could finally connect customer data across channels, enabling targeted marketing campaigns and better personalization.
Cross-channel customer experience
With a unified data model, retailers can bring together browsing, purchasing, and order data from all selling channels into one view. This enables consistent, personalized experiences whether customers shop online or in stores. The key is finding ways to capture customer data that enhance rather than interrupt the shopping experience.
This enables you to offer omnichannel experiences that span online and offline. Customers can view available inventory in their nearby store and place an order to collect. In-store shoppers can interact with products in the flesh and have sales associates place their order to ship to home—earning loyalty points for either transaction.
For Little Words Project, this meant being able to optimize its loyalty program enrollment and create more personalized follow-ups after in-store bracelet customization sessions.
Retail and POS integration
Shopify's commerce platform natively unifies data from your point-of-sale (POS), ecommerce, marketplaces, and partner apps into a centralized repository. This means that no matter if you're focusing on D2C, physical retail, or B2B sales, all your order, product, and customer data originate from a singular source of truth, providing real-time visibility and enabling you to make informed inventory decisions across channels.
Western wear brand Tecovas, for example, develops custom POS extensions that give staff instant access to customer information during checkout. This enables the retailer to process complex transactions—combining immediate purchases with shipped items—as single, coherent orders. When a customer wants to buy a pair of boots in store but have matching accessories shipped home, the transaction happens smoothly in one interaction.
Personalization capabilities
A customer walks into a store looking for a dress she saw online. She's bought from this brand before, both in stores and on their website. The store associate should know her size, her style preferences, her past purchases. But in most retail operations, they won't. That data exists, but it's trapped in separate systems.
Unified operations take clienteling—the process of developing and using detailed customer profiles to offer more personalized experiences—outside the realm of brick and mortar. Sales reps can view all of a customer’s in-store and online data in a single location, including purchase histories, customer service interactions, and first-party data.
When Australian fashion house Aje set out to mirror its in-store customer experience on its digital platform, store associates had no insight into online customer behavior, and their website couldn't reflect in-store interactions. By giving store staff access to complete customer profiles and enabling seamless cross-channel shopping, it increased conversion rates by 135%.
Outreach and marketing integration
When luxury florist Venus et Fleur expanded from ecommerce to physical retail, they faced a common challenge: how to maintain personalized customer relationships across channels. Store associates couldn't see online purchase history. Marketing campaigns couldn't reflect in-store interactions. The customer experience felt disconnected.
The solution lay in unified customer data. By connecting every interaction—from website visits to store purchases—into a single profile, Venus et Fleur could finally deliver truly personalized experiences. It implemented custom features like personalized greeting cards and delivery scheduling across both online and in-store channels. Marketing campaigns could now reflect a customer's complete history with the brand, whether they shopped online, in stores, or through social commerce.
"Having our channels synchronized through Shopify allows us to implement consistent marketing and engagement strategies, whether through online campaigns, in-store events, or social media outreach,” says Brendan Gorman, Head of Ecommerce, Venus et Fleur.
The strategy delivered strong results, cutting abandoned checkouts by 12% and increasing AOV by 10-15% year-over-year.
Inventory and fulfillment operations
"Do you have this in the back?" It's a question as old as retail, but modern shoppers expect a better answer than "let me check". They want to know if it's available at another store, in a warehouse, or ready to ship to their home. More importantly, they expect every employee and every channel to have the same answer.
This level of integration demands a real-time inventory management platform—one that automatically records all inventory changes, from customer purchases and returns to supplier deliveries and stock transfers.
Minimalist luggage brand Monos used Shopify to make inventory visibility absolute. Store associates can access real-time stock levels across the entire business—when something's not available in-store, they can check warehouse inventory instantly and arrange shipping. Online shoppers see local store stock, choosing between immediate pickup or home delivery. This transparency drove 40% year-over-year revenue growth in regions with physical stores.
This impact extends beyond single stores. Oz Hair and Beauty used this unified inventory view to fuel rapid expansion, opening seven new stores in 18 months. Each location operates as part of a unified network, sharing stock and fulfillment capabilities. The result? Revenue grew nearly 500% year-over-year.
“Shopify POS has empowered us to transform our business from an ecommerce seller to an omnichannel retailer practically overnight, with the flick of a switch,” says Anthony Nappa, CEO and Chief Customer Officer at Oz Hair and Beauty. “Because we no longer need extensive developer input and third party POS integrations, we quickly grew the retail side of our business and launched seven stores easily.”
Omnichannel order management
Modern commerce demands sophisticated order management. A single purchase might combine items shipping from a warehouse, pickup from a local store, and delivery from another location entirely. The systems handling these transactions need to be invisible to customers while giving staff complete control.
When streetwear retailer Filling Pieces needed a platform that could handle 10,000 simultaneous shoppers during flash sales, it discovered their existing systems couldn't scale. After unifying operations, the brand increased staff training efficiency ninefold and saw a 25% increase in average order value.
“For us, Shopify is the only true omnichannel solution,” shares Paulinho Chin, Ecommerce Director at Filling Pieces. “It allows our customers to buy both online and in-store with a consistent experience. It enables flexibility and efficiency across our channels—whether it is online, in-store or at a pop-up event. We also don’t have to worry about downtime or site crashes.”
This hasn’t just been experienced by Filing Pieces: Shopify POS retailers experienced an equivalent omnichannel sales growth of +150% quarterly on average year over year.
Analytics
The impact of omnichannel operations extends beyond marketing. When all customer data flows through one system, retailers gain powerful analytics capabilities. You can track customer behavior across channels, measure the effectiveness of omnichannel initiatives, and identify opportunities for improvement.
And because every touchpoint you’ve had with a customer feeds back to their unified profile, you multichannel attribution becomes easier. Easily access your most important performance metrics and identify which channels earn the most sales.
Implementing omnichannel operations in your store
The solution isn't adding more systems—it's unifying existing ones. Leading retailers are consolidating their operations onto single commerce platforms that connect every customer touchpoint. Here's how to make that transition successfully.
Choose your commerce platform
Your technology foundation determines what's possible. Start by understanding where you are and where you need to go. Map your current retail channels, document peak traffic periods, and project your growth trajectory. Consider which existing systems you'll need to maintain and which you can replace.
Look beyond basic features when evaluating platforms. Your solution needs to handle everything from high-volume sales periods to rapid retail expansion without requiring complex integrations.
Pay attention to how platforms handle:
- Real-time inventory updates everywhere you sell
- Single view of customer behavior and preferences
- Flexible order routing and fulfillment options
- Quick staff onboarding and training
- Ready-to-use integrations with essential tools
Establish your data infrastructure
With your platform selected, focus on building a solid data foundation. Start with a comprehensive audit of your existing data across all systems. Document where customer information lives, how inventory is tracked, and what historical data you need to preserve. Create a detailed map of data relationships between systems.
Next, develop data standards for your unified system. Define how customer profiles will be structured, what information you'll collect at each touchpoint, and how you'll maintain data quality. Establish protocols for handling duplicate customer records, standardizing product information, and managing inventory counts.
Make sure your data model includes:
- Customer purchase histories from their ecommerce platform
- Loyalty program data
- Inventory records across warehouses and stores
- Marketing campaign performance metrics
💡Pro tip: Shopify builds a unified customer profile for everyone who shares their email address or phone number with your business—even if they haven’t yet made a purchase. Any associated data from third-party apps flows back to this unified profile for a 360-view on your customers.
Configure your sales channels
Multichannel sales requires more than just a solid technical setup—it's about creating a cohesive customer experience. Start by documenting your customer journey across channels. Map out how customers discover products, what information they need at each stage, and how they move between channels to make purchases.
Configure each channel to support this journey. Set up your POS to handle both standalone sales and complex omnichannel scenarios like endless aisle shopping. Configure your online store to reflect real-time inventory across locations. Establish clear protocols for how channels communicate inventory changes, price updates, and customer information.
Key channel configurations to establish include:
- POS setup for both standard and omnichannel transactions
- Online store integration with physical inventory
- Mobile app or progressive web app capabilities
- Marketplace integrations where relevant
- Social commerce channel setup
Set up inventory and order management
Proper inventory and order management forms the backbone of unified commerce. Begin by mapping your complete inventory network: stores, warehouses, and fulfillment centers. Define inventory thresholds and reorder points for each location, accounting for both local and online demand.
Create clear fulfillment rules that determine how orders route between locations. Establish protocols for split shipments, store pickup, and returns processing. Consider edge cases like seasonal demand spikes or store transfers.
Oz Hair and Beauty demonstrated this approach when launching seven new stores in 18 months—each location operated as part of their unified inventory network from day one.
Essential inventory management elements to consider include:
- Real-time inventory syncing everywhere you sell
- Clear fulfillment routing rules
- Return and exchange protocols
- Safety stock levels by location
- Automated reorder points
- Transfer protocols between locations
Train your staff
Staff training now extends far beyond basic register operation. Success requires more than just teaching employees how to use a new system—they need to understand how unified commerce changes their daily interactions with customers.
Begin with system fundamentals: how to process transactions, check inventory, and access customer profiles and purchase histories. Then move to complex scenarios: handling split fulfillment orders, processing cross-channel returns, and using customer data to provide personalized service.
Most importantly, help staff understand how unified commerce changes customer interactions. Show them how to use customer profiles to provide better service, how to leverage inventory visibility to save sales, and how to maintain consistent experiences across channels. Monos proves this comprehensive approach works—they reduced training time to half a day while improving customer service quality.
Measuring success
Success in unified commerce means tracking more than just sales figures. You need to understand how your business performs across three key areas: customer behavior, operational efficiency, and channel performance.
Start by measuring how customers interact with your unified commerce system. Track cross-channel conversion rates to understand how well your channels support each other, and monitor customer lifetime value to see how unified experiences impact long-term relationships. Pay special attention to repeat purchase rates to maximize customer lifetime value.
Key metrics to track:
- Cross-channel conversion rates
- Customer lifetime value
- Inventory turnover by location
- Order fulfillment efficiency
- Staff productivity
- Return rates by channel
- Customer satisfaction scores
The future of omnichannel operations
The technology that once fractured retail operations is now bringing them together. AI-powered inventory optimization predicts demand across channels. Machine learning personalizes every customer interaction. Fulfillment networks make same-day delivery standard. But perhaps the most striking transformation isn't technological—it's philosophical.
Leading retailers no longer see stores and websites as separate channels to be connected. Instead, they're building unified brands that meet customers wherever they are, however they want to shop. The distinction between online and offline retail is disappearing, replaced by something both more complex and more natural: commerce that simply works.
For retailers ready to make this transformation, the path forward is clear. The question isn't whether to unify your operations—it's how quickly you can make the shift.
Explore how Shopify's unified commerce platform can transform your retail operations. Our experts can help you build a foundation for seamless growth, whether you're opening your first store or scaling across continents.
Omnichannel operations FAQ
What are omnichannel operations?
Omnichannel operations manage all sales channels, customer data, and backend processes as one unified system. Unlike traditional retail approaches that connect separate systems, true omnichannel operations provide real-time synchronization across physical stores, ecommerce, marketplaces, and social commerce platforms from a single source of truth.
What are the 4 C's of omnichannel?
The 4 C's represent the core pillars of omnichannel retail:
- Commerce: Unified sales across all channels
- Customer: Single view of customer interactions
- Content: Consistent messaging and experiences
- Channel: Seamless integration across touchpoints
What's an example of successful omnichannel operations?
Venus et Fleur demonstrates unified commerce in action. The luxury florist unified their customer data across channels, implemented personalized delivery scheduling both online and in-store, and connected their marketing campaigns across all touchpoints. This approach reduced abandoned checkouts by 12% and increased average order value by 10-15% year-over-year.
What is an omnichannel operating model?
An omnichannel operating model centralizes all retail operations on a single platform, including inventory management, customer profiles, order processing, and analytics. This creates one source of truth that enables consistent customer experiences and efficient operations across all channels.
How does unified commerce differ from traditional retail operations?
Traditional retail connects separate systems through complex integrations. Unified commerce eliminates this need by providing one platform for all operations. According to EY research, this reduces total cost of ownership by 22% while enabling 20% faster implementation of new capabilities.