Brighton, United Kingdom, is world famous for its pier, creative community, amusement arcade, and the seaside towns thriving independent business community.
More than 30 of Brighton’s independent retailers are using Vend ePOS to run their retail businesses. The independent retail hotspot has an eclectic range of retailers, from rubber duck speciality stores to stunning homeware, gift and fashion retailers, like Lavender Room.
We talked to Jennifer Atherton, owner of Lavender Room, about how she uses Vend to make informed decisions from real data and reporting, and how it helps Brighton retailers like Lavender Room get to know their customers and keep them coming back.
And the exciting news is the Vend team are coming to visit Brighton 20-24 May!
Brighton retailers can get in touch to set up a time for the team to visit your store or to chat about how Vend can help your business. Contact us on +44 78 5224 4059 or go to vendhq.com/uk to find out more about Vend.
How long have you been trading and what was one of your early challenges running an independent retail store?
We’ve been trading now for 16 years. My business partner and I used to work in London for big High Street retailers before coming here to set up our business.
We used to use another ePOS company, but they were quite old fashioned and archaic so we finally made the switch to Vend about five years ago.
Vend is a lot easier to use than our previous system that needed updating all the time. It’s saved us time because it’s more user-friendly.
What’s it like being part of Brighton’s independent business community and being located in North Laine?
We’re lucky in Brighton because unlike lots of other towns we have a big independent business community. Where we are in the North Laine area is pretty much all independent businesses, around 300 indies in a small area. The Brighton community really loves that and wants to look after the independent businesses.
We have the High Street here as well with the big shopping centre, but the North Laine area is very independent and eclectic. I think that’s what gives Brighton retail so much character. There’s all sorts of shops rubbing shoulders with each other, that’s quite hard to find in other places.
As an independent retailer, how do you keep up with micro trends?
What we do is buy little and often. If there’s a new trend we can buy limited stock and see how it sells, so we can follow trends without having to make a large commitment.
That’s how we like to buy, we don’t place huge orders in one go, we tend to keep placing orders all the time and look for suppliers that allow us to work with very short lead times so that we can do that.
What’s it like using Vend in store?
Vend is a very clean, easy-to-use system. It doesn’t even require a lot of training for staff because you just open it up and can see what to do.
I would recommend Vend because it does what it says and it’s a clean, simple, easy to use system, which is what retailers really want, and it minimises all our admin time.
How does Vend make an impact on your bottom line?
It’s been great for us because we’re very reactive in the way we buy, so we can chase the sales and follow what customers want.
We tend to use it for very specific product decisions, like reporting on weekly sales or seeing what our best sellers are, at a very product focused level.
What Vend allows us to do is have close behind the scenes reporting. For us, it’s all about the reporting so we can access our best sellers, we can see what suppliers are doing well and what profits we’re making, so for us that’s been really really good. The till features are also lovely.
Brightoners keep an eye out for the Vend team 20 – 24 May! Get in touch to set up a time for the team to visit your store or to chat about how Vend can help your business. Contact us on +44 78 5224 4059 or go to vendhq.com/uk.
Vend’s cloud-based ePOS software streamlines retail business, making it easy to make sales, monitor stock levels, sync with your online store and access real-time business insights from anywhere. More than 20,000 stores in 140 countries use Vend, including more than 30 independent retailers in Brighton.
About Lucia Afanasy
Lucia joined Vend in New Zealand in 2017 before flying across the world to join the London team. She works on all things marketing across the UK, Europe, Middle East, and Africa. Her passions and work experience include retail, production, and social media. When she’s not in the office, Lucia loves exploring London, planning trips, and trying to keep her plants alive.