Building an omnichannel strategy with Toyworld & stockinstore

Overview

Toyworld is Australia’s largest specialist toy retailer with 125 stores across the country. On a mission to optimise fulfilment, Toyworld implemented Find in Store in 2020, click & collect in 2021 and lastly ship from store/store fulfilment. Toyworld used Starshipit and stockinstore to complete this omnichannel transformation.

Since implementing Starshipit and stockinstore, Toyworld has achieved:

• 118% increase in online conversion rates.
• 198% increase in click & collect sales in 2022 vs 2021.

Now, national online orders reach customers on average 3 days faster prior to ship from store and 5 days faster on a local level.

The challenge

Like most retailers with an online presence, Toyworld Australia started to see a steady rise in online purchases, but the team began to worry they wouldn’t be able to keep up with the growing demand.

With all online orders being dispatched from a single warehouse in Townsville, Queensland, they were starting to run out of room and were unable to maintain the level of inventory required to sustain their desired growth.

They saw three options:

1. Setup another warehouse: Requiring a substantial investment in stock and staff.
2. Use a 3PL provider: Would still need to purchase inventory as well as adding 3PL fees.

The franchise- or membership-based business model of Toyworld Australia was also a roadblock. These options would create competition between head office and franchisee store members.

The third option was the most radical change: Use their store network to fulfill online orders.

The solution

Using Starshipit’s best-in-class shipping automation and stockinstore's omnichannel solutions, Toyworld was able to connect their eCommerce and physical stores and transform their business.

Let's see how Toyworld deployed Starshipit and stockinstore.

How Starshipit fits in

Starshipit’s shipping automation platform is the fulfilment engine for every Toyworld store. While stockinstore handles the omnichannel logic, Starshipit handles fulfilment.

Once stockinstore determines an order needs to be shipped, Starshipit takes over and assigns couriers, writes back the relevant details to other platforms, applies smart shipping rules and generates shipping labels.

Toyworld’s franchise model benefits from a flexible fulfilment engine like Starshipit because it gives store owners flexibility when it comes to which couriers they want to use, while still giving Toyworld head office control. With this approach, head office can manage their wider brand experience and ensure they’re meeting their own targets.

With Starshipit, each Toyworld store maintains their own courier relationships and service levels with Australia Post, as is the case with many franchise models. But by centralising fulfilment, Toyworld head office gets complete oversight, no matter which store an order comes from.

How stockinstore® fits in

stockinstore’s existing omnichannel initiatives had been successfully adopted by both customers and stores, so adding the Ship from Store solution was an easy and natural progression.

Toyworld identified key stores and members who understood and were engaged in their vision to grow the brand through their Member Fulfilment initiative. There was a clear strategy to initially add stores who would provide greater online stock depth and allow the business to sell significantly more, especially during heavy promotional periods.

The technical solution required stockinstore to integrate with Shopify Plus, Retail Express, a custom stock aggregator and Starshipit for fulfilment management. It replaced multiple Shopify Apps that weren’t sophisticated for a complex store fulfilment program.

The result

Here’s a snapshot of the key quantitative Year on Year metrics Toyworld has achieved:

• 118% increase in eCommerce conversion rate in 2022 compared to 2021.
• 115% increase in website conversion rates in 2022.
• 198% increase in Click & Collect sales.
• Online warehouse reduced converted stock into cash and hasn’t needed to replenish to meet increased demand.
• Significantly increased online stock depth without additional investment, allowing customers to purchase more.
• Decreased staff costs at online warehouse due to decentralized model, particularly during peak periods.

The outcome

The numbers are great, but for Toyworld, there was more to success than just metrics.

Here are some of the amazing qualitative benefits for the business:

• Participation: Stores/franchisees are now actively involved in the success of the online store. They see it as an opportunity to generate incremental revenue rather than as a threat to their bricks and mortar business.
• Cohesiveness: Store owners want to align their product range to the website, giving them the best chance to fulfil orders and generate incremental revenue for doing almost nothing.
• Brand recognition: from both customers, who can trust the business to fulfil their orders quickly, and from suppliers who see bigger orders from Toyworld for products being promoted online.
• Data, data, data: Data from both online and physical stores helps Toyworld drive the business to continually improve in ways they never thought was possible 2 years ago.

To say the solution was a success would be a gross understatement. In 9 short months, 26 stores had started participating in online fulfilment. A long list of stores have since joined the queue to come onboard.