Skip to content
Refer a friend and save £250 each! Find out more.
a selection of candles

Highworth Emporium - Giftware Retailer Case Study

Our innovative multichannel EPoS software has been built with independent gift stores in mind including selling and redeeming gift cards or vouchers, producing gift receipts for any transaction line, advanced promotions and loyalty for increased sales and much more. Read our case study to find out how Highworth Emporium have benefitted from using our software.

About Highworth Emporium

Highworth Emporium is an independent gift and card shop located in the charming town of Highworth, on the edge of the Cotswolds. Highworth Emporium first opened their doors in August 2016.

The enthusiastic, award winning team are passionate about every single product in the shop, which is full to the brim with beautiful items. Highworth Emporium stock all the gifts you could ever need, and even have a seasonal room that is regularly updated with offerings for Valentine’s Day and Mother's Day, through to Easter and the wedding season. In late September, it becomes a magical Christmas grotto for the festive period.

Highworth Emporium also offer a growing range of eco-friendly, reusable, plastic free items as well as wellbeing & beauty products that are natural, organic and cruelty free.

Highworth Emporium have a store in Swindon and a responsive eCommerce website designed by Intelligent Retail.

View Highworth Emporium

Professional fully integrated responsive eCommerce website for your business

Central stock management for your online channels (and in-store too)

Enhanced eCommerce features to help you sell more

Support for gift cards & vouchers

Discounts and promotions engine

Loyalty schemes

Built-in suite of reports

Easily update product information from one place.

Highworth Emporium logo

The Challenge

When Highworth Emporium joined Intelligent Retail back in 2016 they wanted a system where they could add new products, update product listings and prices and process orders from one central place for both their online and physical store.

Being a giftware retailer Highworth Emporium wanted a system where they were they could offer gift receipts, sell and redeem gift vouchers and offer discounts.

The Solution

After realising that they needed a system that would provide them with the ability to easily manage their product inventory, listings and orders across their online and physical store from one central place, Highworth Emporium reached out to an existing Intelligent Retail giftware retailer who referred them to us.

Having discovered how Connect could effectively manage their product listings and inventory across multiple channels; and streamline their order fulfilment process, enabling them to manage orders efficiently and ensure timely deliveries to their customers, they realised that our multichannel software for independent retailers was an ideal fit for their needs.

Contact us
a woman wearing fashionable clothes
a selection of creams and fragances

The Outcome

Highworth Emporium can now enjoy the benefit of having their stock quantities updated automatically across all their channels when they receive orders, whether online or in-store. This eliminates the need for having to manually update data across different systems, freeing up more time to focus on customer service and business growth.

Intelligent Retail have given Highworth Emporium lots of features that make running their physical store and eCommerce website efficient and helping them boost online sales.

Technology

Connect is a Windows based EPoS software that requires no expensive servers to operate. Using ‘Smart Client’ architecture the software is installed on the local machine and uses the internet to back up securely, apply updates and talk to any online sales channels such as eBay, Amazon, or your website. Connect is not reliant on the internet to operate making this the most resilient solution for retail.

Point of Sale

Sales information and stock visibility is available in real-time as the Connect EPoS solution covers all your inventory requirements within a simple to use stock control system.

As well as being quick and easy to use, Connect is also easy to learn and helps to improve staff members speed and efficiency at the till. Each user can have their own login with their own tailored set permissions. Simply scan a barcode or use the search box lookup to find a product or add products to a transaction. Staff can pend transactions, perform discounts, deposits, returns, gift receipts, add customers and much more.

Reporting

Knowing what is in stock and what is selling improves profitability and productivity, making buying more effective. The Connect EPoS system allows you to quickly see where the biggest profits and margins are coming from by item, department, or supplier. You can even see the days in stock for each item or look at an item, category, or a supplier’s contribution to your company’s profit as a percentage.

Report on staff performance, customer sales, and even items that have been ordered for customers, to improve the customer experience and be able to provide a better service. All reports are presented on-screen, as a PDF or you can export as a CSV file for further manipulation. Each area of the Connect back office has a dedicated set of reports available and by using filters, tag sets and tags you have access to powerful reporting capabilities.

Discounts & Promotions

Maintain tighter control of your margins and increase profitability with well thought out promotions. Ensure slow moving stock is moved on quickly and replaced with better performing lines. Targeted promotions can also help to increase customer spend and reduce human error by applying discounts automatically.

Connect’s advanced discount engine offers a rich suite of options. Discounts can be applied both instore and online with an Intelligent Retail website. You can control which item, or group of items are discounted, select the site or location, and even set a start and finish date.

Customer Loyalty

Connect EPoS has a built-in customer loyalty scheme which can operate in two different ways.

One way is to have a points per pounds spent which will auto generate a gift voucher once a set threshold is met, the other way is to allow points to accrue and then they can be converted to a value on demand and used against a purchase.

Intelligent Retail can create fully designed/branded loyalty cards and gift cards for your customers to keep them coming back to your store.

Stock Control

Connect can help independent retailers increase profit margins and reduce money tied up in stock by ensuring you have the right stock at the right time. The typical saving is a 2% increase in gross profit. Many customers say that the EPoS system pays for itself in the first year, some within 6 months.

Connect has a powerful and flexible stock management structure which is based around a familiar and easy to use folder structure. Your products can be grouped in category folders making stock visible and easily reportable. Powerful filters and tags can enable you to drill into the detail of products, or groups of products, to report on. Connect supports data import for easy transfer of products, customers, and suppliers if changing from another system. You can also set replenishment levels or use ‘suggested’ reordering when creating purchase orders.

Online reviews integration

Market research specialist’s iPerceptions found that people are 63% more likely to buy from an eCommerce site that has user reviews than one without.

Refine by menu

Refine by is a super-powerful and intuitive menu system that helps replicate the shopping experience in a store. Customers shopping online will usually have an idea of what they are looking for and if this were to be replicated in a shop, they would simply head to the aisle in question or ask member of staff to help then locate the right products.

Key features for independent gift retailers

  • Sell and redeem gift cards or vouchers
  • Produce gift receipts for any transaction line
  • Advanced promotions and loyalty for increased sales
  • Mass price changer
  • Products info upload
  • Various discount options
a couple of bamboo jar candles placed on a table
"The easiness of using the till, processing deliveries, applying promotions, discounts, loyalty schemes – it is all so naturally easy and intuitive. There is vast variety of reports, making ordering so much easier and quicker. When it comes to online site, the fact that we have everything combined in one system is just wonderful. We have one stock that supplies all online channels and store itself, it could not be any easier. We are particularly chuffed with our website, very intuitive, designed exactly how we wanted it and most importantly generating sales from day one!"
Aga from Highworth Emporium
a selection of beauty products

See more customer stories

Hello,

We are very sorry, but the browser you are visting us with is outdated and not complient with our website security.

Please upgrade your browser to a modern secure version to view our website.