Frank And Oak is a Canadian apparel brand founded in 2012. A certified B corp, the brand quickly blossomed into one of Canada’s leading retailers. Today, Frank And Oak operates a thriving direct-to-consumer (DTC) ecommerce business and 15 brick-and-mortar stores located throughout Canada.
After being acquired by Unified Commerce Group (UCG) in 2020, the team put a renewed effort on driving sustainable growth and providing an optimal experience across their online and in-store sales channels. While Shopify Plus was enabling rapid digital growth, their migration to a new point-of-sale (POS) and order management system (OMS) was falling short of expectations. “It felt like we were sprinting on the digital side, but moving slowly at multiple levels with retail,” says Guillaume Jaillet, Chief Omnichannel Officer at Frank And Oak. “Our retail stores are core to our business, and we couldn’t afford for them to fall behind.”
The brand moved to Shopify POS to enable their retail business to keep pace with their rapid digital growth. Since moving to Shopify POS, Frank And Oak has:
- Reduced operating expenses associated with POS by 47%
- Reduced transaction fees by nearly 3%
- Eliminated multiple hours of monthly POS outages
The Challenge: Creating a frictionless omnichannel experience
After more than a decade of rapid growth, Frank And Oak knew that improving their omnichannel customer journey would be crucial in the next chapter of their success story. “Our data tells us that the lifetime value (LTV) of an omnichannel customer is close to double that of a single channel customer,” says Guillaume. “It was important for us to integrate those online and in-store experiences, but it needed to feel seamless, not forced.”
Unfortunately, the POS system Frank And Oak was using at the time didn’t create the synergies they envisioned between digital and retail. “We go through constant inventory fluctuations and shifting demands,” says Guillaume. “It was hard to reliably and accurately represent which stores had certain items in stock to our digital customers when they wanted to try something on. And it was equally difficult to let customers buy a different size online when it was sold out in-store.”
At the same time, frequent POS outages were disrupting retail operations and stifling sales. “Each of our stores were experiencing a few hours of outages monthly. We had 70 outages since implementing our previous POS system.” says Julia Rossi, Retail Operations Manager at Frank And Oak. “Our staff had to drop everything they were doing to prevent sales from being lost in those situations. It was a poor experience for our customers and disrupting for the team.”
The brand also wanted to run promotions to drive excitement and sales, but the integration between their POS system and Shopify Plus was an imperfect solution. “We had to have two unique sets of promotional codes for online and in-store sales, which made sales tracking really difficult,” says Julia. “We needed a POS solution that would allow us to launch a true omnichannel promotion and reward our customers for their loyalty regardless of how they purchased.”
Our retail stores have historically been the number one driver of omnichannel customers who shop both online and in-person, so they are critical to our growth. To continue offering shoppers a cohesive experience, we needed a POS system that offered more synergy with our ecommerce channel.
The Solution: A seamless transition to Shopify POS
The success Frank And Oak had already seen on the ecommerce front with Shopify Plus made migrating to Shopify POS feel like the natural choice. “There’s a big difference between theoretical omnichannel commerce and a truly unified customer experience,” says Guillaume. “Our goal was to unify sales channels and create flows that connect our digital customers to the in-store experience, and vice versa. Everything we were seeing pointed toward Shopify being the answer.”
After deciding to consolidate their commerce stack on Shopify, the team completed the migration to Shopify POS faster than expected. “The integration went very well,” says Julia. “We actually moved all 15 of our stores to Shopify POS in less than three months, including training the team. Shopify has great training resources, and the POS interface was easy for our store associates to get accustomed to.”
But Shopify POS wasn’t just easy to use, it was more reliable and offered the functionality the team needed. “We noticed the stability of Shopify POS immediately, which saved us the pain of dealing with outages like we used to,” says Julia. “We don’t have to worry about price syncing issues or incorrect inventory information anymore either because of how seamlessly Shopify POS integrates with our online store.”
Other perks of moving to Shopify POS, such as built-in fraud prevention, also helped the team become more agile and efficient. Native features like these would have required third-party integrations and significant development costs with their previous POS system.
With Shopify, we’re able to create that true omnichannel journey for our customers. We have a fully interoperable system that helps us give standout service to every shopper whether they’re shopping online or in-person.
The Results: Rising sales and lower costs
By leveraging the versatile capabilities of Shopify Plus and Shopify POS, Frank And Oak has synchronized inventory management, order fulfillment, and customer data across all customer touchpoints. The integration has enabled customers to seamlessly transition between browsing online and shopping in-store, ensuring a consistent and fluid experience regardless of the channel.
With their online and in-person sales channel working in unison, Frank And Oak is pursuing new opportunities to improve their customer experience and grow revenue. They are offering more flexible payment options such as buy now, pay later (BNPL) with Klarna as well as buy online, pick up in store, which could only be done in the past when a store had each item on-hand.
“Offering reliable BOPIS in-store has been impactful,” says Julia. “On top of that, we had our first real omnichannel promotion this month. Having a single promo code for both channels makes it easier for us to deploy omnichannel promotions and measure the impact they drive online and across our network of stores.”
As an added benefit, the brand has significantly lowered their operating costs. “We chose Shopify POS for how it could help us fulfill our omnichannel vision. The financial benefits were the cherry on top,” says Guillaume. “Compared to our previous POS system, we’ve seen a 47% reduction in operating costs and close to a 3% reduction in transaction fees, which are impossible to ignore. And this doesn’t even factor in the development work that would have been necessary before to connect the dots between OMS, digital, POS, loyalty, you name it.”
Above all, Frank And Oak’s retail staff are now equipped to focus on what they’re best at—connecting with and servicing their customers—thanks to a more stable POS system they can place their full confidence in. “It’s hard to be in the headspace to provide excellent customer service when you’re scrambling to deal with outages and price syncing issues,” says Guillame. “Shopify has proven to be the full package when it comes to putting those problems behind us. If anything, we wish we would have migrated sooner."
Unifying our commerce stack on Shopify has noticeably improved our omnichannel customer experience and our bottom line. We’re spending less on technology, there’s greater synergy between our sales channels, and we’re cultivating more loyalty and engagement at every level of interaction.