Vend helped Hello Houseplant run a more seamless omnichannel experience.
Home & Gifts
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Multi-store
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AU
Australia
Founded in 2020, Hello Houseplant was born from the idea of a plant delivery service where people could send plants as gifts to one another during the COVID lockdown period. Once lockdown ended, Hello Houseplant opened 4 brick and mortar locations.
Hello Houseplant has 4 retail stores in Australia: 3 in Perth, and 1 in Melbourne. Geared as a plant as a gifts business - their focus is serving people who are new to plants.
hellohouseplant.com/At a Glance
Vend helped Hello Houseplant run a more seamless omnichannel experience.
With Vend, Hello Houseplant can now:
The Challenge
When Johann Kim’s retail store, Pigeonhole, had to shut down because of the pandemic, he created Hello Houseplant, an ecommerce site that would serve as a solution for the financial hole experienced by his other business. Hello Houseplant grew quickly from there, and soon added multiple brick and mortar locations when Australia opened back up.
Opening a new business during the pandemic was an interesting exercise for Johann. It was mentally and emotionally challenging to push out an idea that would assist with the financial burden of closing his existing retail businesses. Starting a business that would be purely online, also presented as a challenge for Johann, as it was not something he had experienced before. “Creating an engaging customer service experience in-store is my specialty, so having to try and develop an online community and customer service was something very foreign,” he says.
As the business initially only operated online, Hello Houseplant chose to set up their processes through an e-Commerce provider. When the decision came to open physical stores, they initially used that same provider’s accompanying POS software. However, they found the system to be very clunky for offline sales, and within 3 months, decided to make the transition to use Vend in-store, and integrate with their existing online platform.
“We had used Vend in my other business, Pigeonhole, and it was an easy data migration from Shopify and also synced pretty well, so we could have a more seamless omnichannel offering.” says Johann.
“Vend syncs well with our online platform, so we could have a more seamless omni channel offering.”
Johann Kim, Founder, Hello Houseplant.
The Solution
The Team at Hello Houseplant easily migrated across from their existing systems to use Vend in-store.
After selecting Vend as their new point of sale and retail management software, Johann and the team were able to set up the software themselves, simply by exporting an existing database in their current POSand syncing it back into Vend. From there, they linked their Vend account back to their online system to offer that seamless omnichannel experience.
In doing so, the team was able to fill in the gaps from their previous POS, particularly in terms of reporting features such as performing inventory counts and no longer having to manually manage stock adjustments. The team also benefited by automating reorder limits for products and by having stock reports available that include inventory-based metrics.
“It's very easy to use the filters and tags to bring up relevant data really quickly and intuitively.”
Johann Kim, Founder, Hello Houseplant.
Hello Houseplant brings their solution together with the best in retail
The Results
Hello Houseplant is looking forward to growing their brand with Vend.
Since making the switch, Johann has loved the simplicity of the reporting in Vend. “It's very easy to use the filters and tags to bring up relevant data really quickly and intuitively. I sit on our business dashboard most of the day and love the snapshot that it gives me across all my locations. The general simplicity and intuitive nature of the software is great and easy for training new staff.”
The automation and simplicity of Vend has allowed Johann to focus on what he loves doing, which is engaging with the plant community. “It's a different type of customer that is into plants. They are kinder, calmer (except when there is a new rare plant that has just arrived!) and they are very generous with their information. Everyone is sharing in this wonderful hobby together and it's a really wonderful and open community that helps each other with tips and advice. You also feel so much more relaxed when working in an environment full of plants. It hardly feels like work!”
“The general simplicity and intuitive nature of the software is great and easy for training new staff.”
Johann Kim, Founder, Hello Houseplant.
