How elph ceramics Remodelled its Customer Database and Reduced Inventory Complexity with Shopify

The Challenge

Ceramics homeware studio, elph ceramics needed to find a better way to manage their inventory and present a flawless front-end design for an easier user experience. 

The Results

After implementing Shopify POS, elph ceramic’s customer database increased by 25%, its customer retention rate increased 30%, and the time saved on inventory management can now be used to grow the business. 

In 2016, sisters Sophie and Eloise opened elph ceramics in Paddington, Sydney. They housed ceramics by 20 other budding designers and had a small studio at the back of their store. Eighteen months ago, they decided to expand their own product range, grow manufacturing, and redesign the product range. 

Using Shopify, what began with the iconic ‘cuddle cup’ has grown to 30 bespoke pieces in earthy, Australian-inspired tones. By implementing Shopify's POS system, it has helped the sisters reduce complexity with their inventory and consumer data. 

Moulding a new system

Two years ago, Sophie began to work at elph ceramics full time and her first task was to completely refresh ecommerce and inventory management. Sophie had two specific goals: firstly inventory management and secondly to build a stunning front-end design creating flawless UX for customers.

For point of sale, elph ceramics were originally using accounting software as a POS system, but had issues capturing customer data and updating inventory levels when making sales. When elph ceramics switched to Shopify POS, it became simple to find a product, manage inventory and update product prices.

With Shopify POS, Sophie also reduced the amount of time taken to do inventory management by 30 minutes a day. 

The amount of times I have to do a stocktake is close to never. I still do stocktakes, but before I had to check our stock at the end of each day to identify what I sold and then update our online stock. With Shopify POS, it’s all done for me.

POS was the glue that held it all together 

Before implementing Shopify POS, capturing customer data was "a nightmare", Sophie says. Shopify POS was the missing piece of the puzzle, taking the business from being a retail store, to a business which can sell and grow globally.

Shopify POS inventory and transfer functionalities make it easy for whoever is in the retail store and the warehouse to see what is coming and when. This means Sophie and Eloise can do pre orders for products and for seasonal events like Mother's Day and Christmas. 

Since implementing Shopify POS, elph ceramics has enjoyed a 25% increase in its customer database, and a customer retention rate of close to 30%.

"The biggest thing for us is how Shopify POS fits into our strategy as a small business. Shopify is giving us the ability to free up a lot of our time to now implement some of the strategies we have.", explains Sophie Rankine, Co-Founder, elph ceramics. 

I would recommend Shopify POS as everything is centralised, and you never have to worry if your website is showing the wrong number of products in the backend. With customer data, everything's in one place so you're not sending three of the same email to one person.

As elph ceramic continues to grow, Sophie and Eloise are expanding their operations and adding new staff to the business. 

It’s been really easy to teach our new staff how to use the POS system, which has taken a lot of stress out of their first few days because it’s so simple to look up products and prices, check in-store pick-ups and process sales. I only spent about 20 minutes teaching our new staff how to use Shopify POS, so it saved significant time during onboarding.