Vend helps Underground Printing track multi-location inventory across all 28 stores.
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Multi-store
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United States
Underground Printing specialises in custom printed apparel with showrooms throughout midwest America.
Underground printing opened its first stores in 2006. The business now operates 28 stores throughout midwest America.
undergroundshirts.com/At a Glance
Vend helps Underground Printing track multi-location inventory across all 28 stores.
With Vend, Underground Printing can now:
The Challenge
Underground printing was established in 2001. The company was founded by Rishi Narayan and Ryan Gregg, who grew up together. They both enrolled in the University of Michigan to study engineering but realized university wasn't for them. So with their entrepreneurial spirit, they started Underground Printing—a business that specialises in custom-printed apparel.
Underground Printing started selling customised apparel on campus to groups and organizations, and as the company grew, Narayan and Gregg opened service-based showrooms where customers could view samples and order custom apparel. It wasn't long until they realized customers also wanted to shop in-store for merchandise, which led them to begin selling collegiate and local pride merchandise.
Narayan said, “We had opened up these locations, and when we decided we wanted to sell retail merchandise in these stores that were predominantly supposed to be a service-based showroom for custom printing, it was important that the experience was good."
As they introduced this new experience in their stores, they needed a system to assist with sales transactions. They built their own in-house point-of-sale system to help with this; however, as they were growing so fast, they needed a solution that could also do multi-store inventory.
“We had opened up these locations, and when we decided we wanted to sell retail merchandise in these stores that were predominantly supposed to be a service based showroom for custom printing it was important that the experience was good.”
Rishi Narayan, Owner - Underground Printing
The Solution
From the outset, Underground printing had to maintain stock at multiple locations. By integrating Vend's multi-store inventory functionality with their in-house point of sale system, the team created a system that has lasted nearly 10 years and continues to meet the business needs.
Vend came to Narayan's attention through a friend who owned Stitch Labs in 2013.
Narayan said
“We were going to use them (Stitch Labs) for our inventory management on our point of sale, and the feedback was that “We (Stitch Labs) do not handle multi-location inventory. Vend that we integrate with does that”.”
Vend's multi-store inventory functionality caught Narayan’s attention, so he looked into it.
Narayan said “we had already built an in-house point of sales system, and we didn't specifically need Vend for the point of sale system. It was the multi-location inventory, that some company (Vend) out of New Zealand was the only company we could find that was a SaaS company that was able to handle multi-location inventory in the way we needed it.”
“So we had the Vend point of sale, but the main driver was multi-locations. And even to this day, multi-location inventory is not just some run-of-the-mill thing that everyone does…. Multi-location inventory is still very difficult.”
Since Vend offered the features their growing company needed, Narayan chose it over other SaaS products.
He said, “I think that's a testament to Vend, this was a point-of-sale system that we found to solve another problem, and that wasn't the thing that they (Vend) were selling at the time to everyone else.”
Narayan said while the set-up was intense, Vend integrated well into their own system and both are still working well together 10 years later.
“Even to this day, multi-location inventory is not just some run-of-the-mill thing that everyone does…. Multi-location inventory is still very difficult.”
Rishi Narayan, Owner - Underground Printing
The Results
For Underground printing, managing multiple stores and maintaining inventory levels was challenging, but with Vend, the company was able to streamline not only its inventory but also all in-store operations and customer service.
According to Narayan, Vend has helped their business become more efficient.
“It allows us to be efficient; retail is about operational excellence and efficiency. And we aren’t aiming to be the biggest and best retailer out there, but we want to give the best customer experience out there in custom T-shirts and apparel.”
“We learned a long time ago that you can never replace the shopping experience. If done well, it's a great experience…. so our ability to transact efficiently is important.”
Vend’s tag system has also been crucial in helping with the stock levels. Underground Printing has been with Vend for just under 10 years and has hundreds of thousands of products.
“We can export those products, but more importantly, because we have so many products and we don't delete products, we're able to utilise the Tags in the system to help us organise information.
Vend has also made it easy for Underground printing to keep expanding the number of stores as the company continues to grow
Narayan said “it's easy to add on locations, it's easy to add on registers. It's pretty intuitive for training purposes, which is very important.”
“Tech is a fast-changing paced industry, there are lots of different solutions out there… we have not found another that does what Vend does for us, at the service level, at the cost level, and the tools that it provides.”
Rishi Narayan, Owner - Underground Printing
