Faherty Gains Efficiencies, Reduces Costs and Boosts Growth with Unified Commerce at Scale

Faherty is a brand known for more than just premium apparel. From their collaboration with Native artists and leaders to their commitment to environmental sustainability, the certified B Corporation's steadfast values are at the center of their business model.

Technology decisions at Faherty reflect this same forward-thinking approach. The company has championed staying ahead of technological curves, seeking platforms that can grow alongside the business rather than constrain it. This philosophy led Faherty to Shopify POS in their early retail expansion, drawn to the platform's alignment with their long-term vision for unified commerce. As the brand's retail footprint expanded, they temporarily migrated to NewStore.

After three years navigating the complexities of a fragmented commerce stack, Faherty returned to Shopify—this time for true unified commerce at scale. Since then, the brand has achieved remarkable operational and customer experience improvements online and across all of their US retail locations, including:

• Completed POS implementation in three months across 80+ retail locations
• Achieved remote store setup, eliminating on-site IT support and reducing deployment costs
• Cleared end-of-season merchandise from stores via ship-from-store during sale period
• Eliminated hour-long technical support calls with stores and replaced with simple direct message resolution
• Unlocked strategic growth initiatives including BOPIS and international expansion

The Challenge: Costly and complicated integrations limit ability to scale

Data siloes undermine customer experience

With customer and inventory data split between Shopify for online DTC and NewStore for retail, Faherty struggled to deliver the seamless experiences their customers expected.

Gift card visibility issues: When a customer lost a gift card they had bought online, store associates couldn't look it up in Newstore's POS. Associates had to message the customer experience (CX) team and wait for a response. This slow process frustrated everyone: associates couldn't help on the spot, customers faced delays, and the CX team was bogged down with routine lookups.

Buy online, return in-store complications: Integration failures also undermined return operations. The buy-online-return-in-store process often broke down. Refunds didn't always sync back to Shopify, which left customers confused.

CX Limitations: Customer experience tools —like Gladly and Sierra—only saw online order information from Shopify and had no visibility into POS orders. This meant the CX team couldn't provide complete support when customers had questions about in-store purchases.

Integration failures and payment issues disrupt operations

BOPIS was another major gap. "There really was no good way to implement BOPIS with the previous integration," says Nancy Munyak, Head of IT at Faherty. This was a missed opportunity, especially during the holidays when shoppers needed flexible pickup options.

Payment reliability was a growing problem that slowed growth and forced the team to delay key initiatives as well. "We used to have a lot of double charges," Nancy says. "We spent a lot of time refunding payments and dealing with payment gateway issues."

Another problem was that if a store's cash drawer hardware malfunctioned, all cash transactions became impossible, forcing stores to lose potential sales. "You just could not take that sale if the cash drawer was not functioning correctly", Nancy recalls.

Catalog management was manual and error-prone

Managing the product catalog was inefficient. The team had to update two separate catalogs—one in Shopify, one in NewStore—every time prices changed. "Sometimes there would be user error in one or the other and prices wouldn't match," Nancy says. "That's just a bad customer experience when the customer sees one price on the website and you're scanning something different."

Heavy reliance on third-party support increased costs

The costs of this fragmented tech stack added up quickly. "Platform costs were huge," Nancy says. "And we were paying for that third party by the hour." Licensing fees and hourly support charges were costing Faherty far too much. The team knew that the money would have been much better spent on growth and enhancing customer experiences.

The Solution: Unifying on Shopify for sustainable, long-term growth

A bold strategic choice

Despite NewStore being "the heart of all our systems," as Nancy describes it, Faherty recognized that their challenges on the platform were constraining their growth. The strategic decision to return to Shopify POS—this time at enterprise scale—represented more than a platform change. "We were basically ripping out that heart and having to build new integrations," Nancy explains. It was a fundamental shift toward unified commerce that was by no means simple. But the team was confident it would be a worthy investment to streamline complexity while unlocking omnichannel selling capabilities previously impossible to achieve.

Rapid companywide deployment

The team launched a Shopify POS pilot in Boulder, Colorado at a brand new store and rolled out to 80+ stores less than a month after that. Nancy describes it as "an incredibly quick timeline," and emphasizes that it took strategic planning, long hours, and relentless teamwork.

Using a brand new retail location for the pilot was key. Staff started with Shopify from day one, providing clean data for testing every integration point, and making troubleshooting manageable before scaling up.

Shopify Professional Services played a key role throughout the launch, alongside partners incQX and Boomi. When integration questions or unexpected API issues came up, the team got fast, clear answers that kept the project moving. Nancy notes that this support "made all the difference" and was a major reason the partnership worked so well.

Systems integrator incQX built a custom inventory app that integrates directly with Shopify POS, utilizing Shopify's transfer APIs to streamline inventory management workflows for store staff.

Streamlined operations and omnichannel experiences

Unifying on Shopify solved major operational headaches for Faherty and unlocked strategic growth opportunities. Catalog management became simple: price changes, SKU updates, and product launches now happen in one place. Staff no longer worry about mismatched prices or manual errors. "Now it's consistent," says Nancy. "The stores are seeing the same prices as our website."

Native Shopify features have made BOPIS possible—a capability the company had wanted for years. Nancy notes how it was one of the "two big things that our CEO was looking to unlock with this big change." The team is currently piloting a limited BOPIS rollout for the holidays.

It's much more efficient to clear inventory directly from stores rather than shipping it back to the warehouse first, especially when we need to make room for new seasonal merchandise.

Returns and exchanges improved dramatically. "Stores had no visibility," says Nancy. "They thought they refunded the customer, but they didn't," highlighting the difficulties of their previous setup. With Shopify, staff can see exactly what's happening, and customers get their money back promptly. With their recent move to Loop Returns, the team is further streamlining online exchanges.

Seamless team adoption

Retail associates adapted quickly to Shopify POS. Many were already familiar with Shopify, making the transition smooth, and Nancy reports that feedback has been overwhelmingly positive. "Our store associates' happiness is a big part of what we're trying to achieve, so it's been exciting seeing how they've found Shopify making an impact and making their lives easier," she says.

Nancy shares that with Shopify POS, staff proficiency rose quickly. "It's easy to click around and figure anything out," one associate notes. Beyond ease of learning, staff immediately noticed operational improvements. "Inventory management is more straightforward and POS checkout functions work faster," says another team member. The speed improvements extend to payment processing, with staff appreciating the speed of payment capture and the ability to automatically populate customer emails from their Shop account.

Empowered retail staff fuels customer service improvements

Shopify's unified platform enabled advanced customer service capabilities that were previously impossible. AI chat functionality, which couldn't integrate with the previous POS's order data, now automatically handles in-store order inquiries. "If a customer has a question about an in-store order, even an endless aisle order, they can use our chat tool and get an immediate answer," says Nancy. Catalog search functionality also operates seamlessly with intuitive filtering options, making it much more efficient for associates to assist customers in finding specific products.

The enhanced visibility gained through unified customer profiles has been game-changing in-store. Associates now have immediate access to comprehensive guest profiles that display loyalty points, gift card balances, and complete product variant details including specific measurements like waist and length sizing. The team also can now send gift cards directly via email or text, adding convenience and flexibility for customers.

The team also gained more immediate feedback on performance metrics that help inform real-time decision making thanks to Shopify Analytics. Associates can view daily sales data complete with product imagery.

The Results: Saving time and money fosters improved experiences

Faherty has seen transformational results spanning operational efficiency, customer experience, and business growth since unifying on Shopify.

Saving time and unlocking new efficiencies

Operational efficiency gains have extended throughout the business. Ship-from-store capabilities have become crucial to Faherty's omnichannel strategy, especially during busy sales events. "It's much more efficient to clear inventory directly from stores rather than shipping it back to the warehouse first, especially when we need to make room for new seasonal merchandise," says Nancy.

New store openings have required dramatically less effort. Previous store openings required Nancy's IT team to travel on-site for setup, new store locations can now be managed remotely. "All the Shopify hardware is plug-and-play," says Nancy. "I don't have to send anyone to the store anymore. We can support store teams from New York where we work and live, and when there's an issue, we can solve it virtually."

The support improvements extend beyond new store setups to day-to-day operations. "Store support is much simpler," says Nancy. "Previously, hour-long calls would need to be scheduled for most technical support issues. Now most issues at the store related to POS can be solved with a quick message or email."

This shift has freed up both internal and external resources for strategic work. "Support hours are now spent on enhancing our Shopify environment instead of keeping the business running," says Nancy. "Our internal team can handle most of the Shopify support issues ourselves."

All the Shopify hardware is plug-and-play. I don't have to send anyone to the store anymore. We can support store teams from New York where we work and live, and when there's an issue, we can solve it virtually.

Reliability improvements remove roadblocks to sales

Platform reliability has eliminated common operational roadblocks of the past. Shopify POS allows stores to continue processing sales manually even when equipment issues occur such as cash drawer malfunctions. The team is capturing more sales instead of turning them away.

A new era of global, omnichannel growth

With Shopify, Faherty has unlocked strategic capabilities that were previously not possible. The native Shop App integration has also unlocked new marketing opportunities for in-store customers that weren't available before, enabling Faherty to reach more customers in new ways through Shop's discovery network.

By choosing unified commerce on Shopify over fragmented integrations, Faherty is positioned for continued growth while ensuring they don't have to make any compromises upholding their high customer experience standards.

All of our orders now are unified in one platform with Shopify, which means we only need to maintain one product catalog instead of two. Having it all in one place gives us better self-service capabilities and has saved the team a lot of time.