Phoenix Style: Luxury Preloved Fashion Boutique Takes Flight with Lightspeed Retail

Soaring Above the Competition

Phoenix Style began in humble beginnings amidst Cobham’s quaint high street. Born from a spark of rebellion against cookie-cutter, fast fashion, it was more than a boutique, but a refuge of individuality, originality, and character standing against the predictable monotony of mainstream fashion retailers. After acquiring the business, owing to a love of fashion, luxury, and pre-loved items, Paige has grown the business considerably during her tenure as owner.

Phoenix Style Finds Its Fire with Lightspeed

This success, however, didn’t happen overnight. Once Paige had acquired Phoenix Style, she quickly realised she had run into a problem. Phoenix Style were using an old point of sale system that was, as Paige describes, “very clunky and very basic”, that “basically just looked after [their] products and gave [them] basic reports and that was it”.

After having to manage multiple different systems to do multiple different things that were threatening to dim the Phoenix fire, Paige decided to upgrade. After all, Phoenix Style may sell vintage items, but that didn’t mean their point-of-sale system had to be one. Enter Lightspeed Retail.

“Since we’ve partnered with Lightspeed, it's probably halved our admin time”, Paige said. “I think it's just been a real game changer for us as a business.” Any upgrade to a new point-of-sale system is bound to come with upgrades, perks, and new benefits, but Lightspeed went one step further. “The physical point-of-sale system we use at the till, and the stock management have been unbelievable. And, the reporting that I do at the moment is fabulous, too”, Paige commented. “Would we ever go back to the old system? No way. There was just too much to do. It was never done well. Our database with Lightspeed is so much more seamless. All the staff love it. Everything's finally in one place”.

Beyond the Vintage Veil with Lightspeed Advanced Reporting

No business can succeed in the long-term without paying extra close attention to sales and profitability. Working out what works for your business, and what doesn’t, can often be the difference between success and stagnation. Lightspeed was able to empower Phoenix Style to truly understand their business through Advanced Reporting that allowed them to save time, automate insights, and drill down on data.

“We’re really interested in the types of products that are selling well. We didn't realise that actually we don't sell very many skirts. We sell a lot of denim, too, and we couldn't believe how much denim we have sold. And, now Lightspeed has given us that information. It's been able to really allow us to tidy up what we take and also make us more aware of where our better sellers are”, Paige commented.

Lightspeed’s Inventory Management has come quite handy, too. Gone are the days of late-night inventory spreadsheets and the dreaded “out of stock” sigh. Instead, real-time insights flow seamlessly between their stores alerting them to low stock levels before shelves start to become bare. “We can keep an eye on where things are. So, before we could never know that we had items in Wimbledon that we didn’t in Cobham. We might even have duplicates of stock”, Paige continued.

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Phoenix Style adopted Lightspeed Payments in October, 2022. Why was it that they chose Lightspeed Payments, and not one of the many number of payment processors on the market today? The reason was quite simple. “Lightspeed Payments offered the best rate compared to everyone else”, Paige said. That wasn’t the only thing, either. “We love the fact that we can manage our tills better because it's just so easy. You can manage your cash, you can manage their payments, and you can manage the lay bys, which we love.”