Technology Helps Specialty Retailers Deliver More Personalized Shopping Experiences

If small business owners could clone themselves to be in multiple locations executing five critical tasks at once, most probably would. Especially if that meant they could spend more face time with customers. Carson Searcy, owner of CBS Sports, an outdoor and sporting goods independent retailer in Morganton, NC, is no exception. From kayaks and tents to outdoor apparel and running shoes, CBS Sports has hundreds of products in its inventory. During busy seasons when gear is flying off the shelves, managing demand with optimized ordering and restocking can be a full-time endeavor. Searcy knew that growing the family business that his father started in 1985 meant finding a way to get out from behind the computer screen where he spent countless hours entering data into spreadsheets and back onto the store floor.

Already customers of NuORDER, CBS Sports began using Lightspeed for its point-of-sale solution when Lightspeed acquired NuORDER. Prior to this, the retailer had no POS system in place and did everything by hand in addition to having a bookkeeper on salary. According to Searcy, using NuORDER by Lightspeed for inventory management, reordering, and one-off specialty orders for customers is where CBS Sports has reclaimed valuable time, enabling the business to grow.

Instead of spending one hour to two hours per vendor placing an order, adding data to different spreadsheets, and then combining them and hoping the columns align, with NuORDER by Lightspeed, Searcy and his team just point, click and upload orders instantaneously. What used to take hours now takes one second to two seconds. Searcy says that about 30 percent of the store’s vendors are on the NuORDER by Lightspeed platform, and with between 250 and 300 vendors, the time savings are monumental.

When stock of a certain product runs low, or a customer needs a specialty size in a pair of shoes, any staff member can easily go into the NuORDER by Lightspeed system to place that order. “You don’t have to hunt for a SKU in folders or worry about copying and pasting it from a file to the order,” Searcy notes. “We can go into our inventory on NuORDER by Lightspeed, find the item, and click reorder. You don’t even have to pick the size or color. If you’re already in the blue shirt size medium, it’s one step and eliminates five to 10 others.”

This easy online reordering feature is critical for CBS Sports because the retailer is known locally for its athletic footwear selection and local podiatrists and physical therapists refer patients there regularly. Searcy said the team uses NuORDER by Lightspeed every day to place custom footwear orders. The platform has also helped the retailer discover unique trends in its footwear business.

“Usually, a size six women’s wide or a men’s 13 wide shoe is not something a retailer would think is a popular size that will be in high demand,” says Searcy. “But we looked at our order data and saw that when we had these sizes in stock, they were selling out within days, so now we keep them in stock all the time.”

Another feature that has been a game-changer for CBS Sports is the integration of product imagery in the NuORDER by Lightspeed platform. Like many retailers, CBS Sports has a staff of young salespeople in their late teens and early 20s. Because the platform is so easy and intuitive to use, Searcy has no hesitation giving his staff access to place orders. And if the store gets busy and he thinks that items might not have been scanned correctly, asking an employee to do an inventory check is simple. With a few clicks in NuORDER by Lightspeed, Searcy can pull up the last order of that item and text or Airdrop a PDF file for a SKU to one of his employees. In the document are images of the product in question, pricing data, and inventory numbers. Even someone who has only worked at the store for a short period of time can easily confirm if there are five blue towels on the shelf or just one.

Searcy said other solutions aren't as simple to use and require PDF files to be emailed to him before he can send them to employees. During this time delay, he said, five other issues could come up, a customer could walk in, and by that point he could have forgotten that an inventory check needed to happen. Not only is NuORDER by Lightspeed a more efficient technology for Searcy, he said it also saves him precious time on giving employees instructions.

“For a small mom-and-pop store like us, if I can save 10 minutes doing anything and use that time to be with customers, that's a win," Searcy says. "A lot of places fail because they forget about the customers. Timesaving is how we grow. Time spent in front of a customer instead of doing tedious work is the only way to survive.”

Ashley Wolf is vice president of marketing for NuORDER by Lightspeed, a one-stop commerce platform for merchants around the world to simplify, scale and provide exceptional customer experiences.