The Inspiration Company is a jewelry brand that’s on a mission to inspire people across the world. The brand started in 2017 as an idea shared between Doug and Ashley Waldbueser, who were trying to maintain a positive attitude through difficult times.
They created inspirational message bracelets to help remind them to stay positive daily. The bracelets proved hugely popular and are now sold in over 50 stores across the United States, as well as via the brand's Shopify website, which fulfills orders around the world.
The founders knew that in order to truly scale and connect with customers, The Inspiration Company had to sell across multiple channels and that in-person selling would be pivotal for immersing shoppers in its brand story. Since moving from Square to Shopify POS, The Inspiration Company has enjoyed:
- Running 50+ stores across the US using one platform
- Earning 80% of its $14M+ revenue from in-person selling in 2022
- Managing over 450 staff with ease
Challenge: Efficiently managing over 50 physical stores across the US
The Inspiration Company was selling at pop-ups, in its stores, and online, and growing at a rapid pace. With sales coming via multiple sales channels and thousands of product variants to manage, keeping track of inventory became a significant challenge.
Initially, the brand used Wix for ecommerce and Square POS for in-person selling, but found that it was not easy to connect the two systems together. As a result, managing inventory as it was received and sold online or via its stores became a major hurdle.
As the brand grew, teams found themselves spending more time working around cumbersome operational inefficiencies. To streamline its workflows, the brand decided to consolidate its tech stack and run everything from Shopify.
There were a lot of roadblocks with our previous setup. Simply adding functions like inventory tracking or rewards were difficult and involved third-party support, which was super expensive. We wanted our POS system and ecommerce platform to work better together.
Solution: Using Shopify as a single system to oversee all operations
Since migrating from Wix to Shopify for ecommerce, and switching from Square to Shopify POS for in-person selling, The Inspiration Company can now manage its inventory from one unified back office.
They can quickly transfer products between stores and proactively replenish inventory before running out of stock. Shopify’s reports give a clear view of which products are most popular at each store location, which makes forecasting demand and restocking easier and more cost effective.
The Inspiration Company also started using POS Go, Shopify’s handheld POS terminal that enables its staff to serve customers and accept payments anywhere on the sales floor. Its integrated bar code scanner and card reader make the checkout experience feel frictionless for customers and staff, who no longer need to juggle an iPad and Bluetooth card reader to close sales.
With over 450 staff, The Inspiration Company appreciates using Shopify’s roles and permissions to manage its staff in bulk. Store Managers can track staff performance—the number of sales they closed, average order value, units per transaction, and more—from Shopify POS’ staff reports.
Having one system to manage our inventory and staff is a huge benefit for our brand. Shopify POS is very simple to use and POS Go a game changer. It’s really easy to use and streamlines our store experience for staff and shoppers.
Results: Launching new stores faster than ever before
The Inspiration Company has found a unique blend of multi-channel selling that works for its brand and has supported its growth internationally. Customers have the freedom to choose how they shop, and can open new stores faster than ever.
Since moving to Shopify and getting funding with Shopify Capital to fuel its growth, the brand saw more than a 700% increase in sales and generated over $14 million in sales in 2022.
So, what’s next for The Inspiration Company? With opening new locations made so easy, the brand will be opening as many as 80 pop-ups across the United States in 2023 to test market viability in 2024.
With Shopify as a partner, the brand can grow with confidence knowing its tech stack can handle anything that comes its way. “Having certainty is something rare for a new business,” Doug explains. “For us, Shopify was a certainty: something that we know works to support our growth. That’s a huge benefit.”
Adding a point of sale location is easy with Shopify: just make inventory available at the new location and you’re ready to go. There’s no limit to the number of locations we can open with Shopify POS—whether permanent or pop-up.
