Mister SFC — Contemporary men’s jeweller syncing inventory across their multiple online stores

Background

The Mister brand has gone from strength to strength since beginning in 2010. From San Francisco and founded by Tom Do, Mister designs and handcrafts top quality, stylish and contemporary men’s jewellery. Mister has been so popular that it has garnered over 3,000 5 star reviews and has established itself as one of the leading men’s jewellery brands around the world. This demand has led to the need to expand its offering internationally, with Mister SFC launching a Mexico store.

Mister SFC create top quality jewelry without the exorbitant price tags.

New online store creates new problems

Creating a new online store specifically for the Mexico market was exciting but challenging. Aside from adapting the brand and products to the native language and currency, Tom now found himself with two inventories to manage. As the Mexico store started to gain traction, Tom and his team found that they spent hours making sure that the inventory on the Mexico store was reflective of the master inventory held on the US store.

Soon enough, this task was becoming impossible to manage, and Tom was losing sales because customers were buying out of stock products. For a new store, this was extra painful as it was expensive to acquire a new customer and then to lose them due to poor customer experience.

Because it took so long to update inventory to then still lose customers due to selling out-of-stock inventory, Mister SFC found it difficult to have full stock available on the Mexico store, let alone push any advertising onto it. This was a big issue as the Mexico store could not operate at its full capacity.

The need to centralise inventory across multiple online stores

Tom needed a solution that could automatically sync his Mexico inventory to the master inventory on his US store. He needed a solution that was affordable, simple, and quick to become familiar with. This was where Syncio came into the picture, and the fact that Syncio provided real-time inventory syncing was another huge benefit.

“Opening the Mexico store helped us convert more customers but at the same time increased our workload. With the help of Syncio, we were able to save time and headaches for both us and our customers.”

— Tom Do, founder Mister SFC

With a setup process that takes minutes to complete, Tom estimates that Syncio has saved countless hours from keeping inventory up-to-date but also using Syncio to import new products onto the Mexico store with a click of a button. In fact, Tom has gone so far as to suggest that without Syncio, he wouldn’t even try to handle inventory across two Shopify stores.

The Mister Omega Cuff Bracelet.

Benefits

Mister SFC is now able to benefit from the scale of multiple channels without compromising on the time and cost of having another store. Customers of the Mexico store can also benefit from reliably purchasing products that are in stock, helping Mister SFC maintain its exceptional 5-star reviews.

Crucially, Syncio has helped Mister SFC maintain a small team with a high performance culture. Tom shares a secret to the success of Mister SFC, “We are a small team with big dreams — we dedicate our team to each store and provide incentives when we complete each month without any inventory issues, customer service issues, and meet or beat our goals! A happy team is a happy business!”

The sky’s the limit for Mister SFC, they have become a truly international brand without having to compromise on the quality of their product and focus on reliable inventory and customer support.

Tips on setting up a new online store reaching a new country

• Figure out the right shipping rates including any import taxes that could be specific to a country in regards to goods delivered.
• Try and test demand for the new market that you are about to enter, including what marketing and distirbution channels are effective in the local market. Don’t just replicate what worked for your original market to the new market. For example, Pinterest may be highly effective in the US but not as widely adopted in Australia.
• Don’t launch a new store without figuring out how to automate inventory management — if you add a new product you will need to spend the same amount of time adding it to the other store. The ongoing management of inventory will become very time consuming especially if order volumes are high.

Find out more about Mr SFC.

Could enjoy the same value that Mr SFC has enjoyed with Syncio? Start a free trial today!