Epos Now featured on Channel 4

“A bit of kit that will revolutionise your business.”

Mary Portas, Retail Consultant

Epos Now has been instrumental in the turnaround of London-based DIY store City Hardware after they approached Channel 4 about being involved in the programme Mary Portas Secret Shopper.

In the series, watched by several million people every week, Mary aims to bring her expertise to help a range of retailers who are in need of some fresh ideas to transform the customer experience and their businesses. In each episode she evaluates every aspect of the business from shop floor to stock room, and armed with her findings Mary shows the business owners and staff exactly where they are going wrong, and what changes need to made.

The store, run by brothers Paul and Simon, was struggling to remain profitable, with 70% of the DIY industry dominated by superstores, they were struggling to hold their own against their fierce competition. City Hardware had a manual process of tracking sales and inventory, and the brothers were never sure of what they had in stock, or how much profit they were making.

Mary’s not just a TV presenter, she’s an internationally recognised retail consultant who managed to become a member of the board at Harvey Nichols by age 30, was appointed by UK Prime Minister David Cameron to lead an independent review into the future of Britain's high streets; and has now been named the 6th most influential person in fashion by fashion industry journal Drapers.

With her vast experience she understood that City Hardware needed to implement best-in-class inventory management and POS. For this she turned to Epos Now.

Before City Hardware was introduced to Epos Now, they had no way of tracking 10,000 products worth of stock or accessing information about their sales or customers. This was preventing the business from providing great customer service as it was time consuming to find products, and prices of their stock. With Epos Now, Paul and Simon are able to view their profit margins for their products, quickly add and edit products, and most importantly can keep an accurate track of their stock, avoiding laborious stock-takes which would take them days with the amount of stock that they carry.

Paul and Simon now receive an alert when products are low in stock.This means that purchase orders can be automatically raised and can be emailed directly to suppliers through the Epos Now Back Office, which ensures the brothers are always aware of which stock they do or don’t have, so they can serve their customers efficiently and encourage loyalty.

Mary Portas’ suggestion of introducing an Epos Now system to City Hardware has helped the business to modernise its processes, which has increased efficiency and profitability. Since implementing Epos Now, City Hardware’s turnover has increased by 35% due to their tighter stock management and their improved visibility of their business.