The more unified your retail stack is, the higher the odds you’ll deliver consistent experiences and reduce costs. Why?
Running ecommerce, stores, inventory, orders, and payments on one platform eliminates fragile integrations and data gaps. With one set of records, genuine personalization is attainable. One profile feeds ads, email, onsite messaging, loyalty, and the customer’s in-store experience.
If your goal is to become a more strategic and profitable retailer, a unified setup makes it possible. In fact, retailers using Shopify’s unified commerce solution experience as much as 150% omnichannel GMV growth quarterly on average.
Ahead, you’ll see how unified commerce works in the real world, with examples from brands and the operational changes behind them.
What is unified commerce, really?
Unified commerce is a business strategy that runs your entire business on one centralized platform. It connects your entire retail operation, from ecommerce store to point of sale (POS) and customer data, through a commerce operating system (COS).
In practice, it means:
- Real-time inventory that’s consistent online and in-store, including reservations and holds
- One customer and order record that follows the shopper across POS and ecommerce
- Shared rules for pickup, ship-from-store, delivery, and returns, set once and applied everywhere
A unified commerce approach eliminates data silos and technical debt. Research shows that retailers who adopt it see an average 8.9% boost in annual sales growth while reducing the total cost of ownership (TCO) by as much as 16%.
Why unified commerce is essential for retail
Many brands call their platform “omnichannel” when in reality, it’s a patchwork of systems attempting to stay in sync, but often leading to delays and inefficiencies.
A unified commerce strategy is built differently from the ground up. Every part of the business operates from the same platform, so data updates in real time.
When a customer buys a product in-store, your inventory updates instantly. If a shopper creates a profile online, the same profile is immediately available to your sales associates on the store floor. This fluidity provides several benefits for retailers:
- Higher lifetime value (LTV) through a single customer view: Retailers using unified data models report larger orders and more repeat behavior. For example, orders are as much as 20% larger when using personalized customer profiles, and first-party identity like Shop Pay correlates with higher repurchase rates.
- Personalization that scales: Under a unified data model, segmentation and offers update in real time across channels. Teams can run clienteling, endless aisles, and AI-powered recommendations without rebuilding audiences in multiple tools.
- Lower TCO by eliminating brittle integrations: Multiple systems mean duplicate licenses, middleware, and custom upkeep. A single platform removes that fragmentation and reduces TCO. Research shows retailers see 22% lower TCO versus piecemeal stacks, reducing middleware and generating more savings.
For example, Pepper Palace, with more than 100 stores, migrated to Shopify and reduced technical maintenance. The unified stack removed as much as 60% of middleware and saved around $20,000 per year.
Real-world unified commerce examples from leading brands
Now that you know why unified commerce is important for retailers, explore some examples of brands doing it right:
Belstaff
This century-old heritage brand needed to modernize without losing what customers love most. “It’s the most challenging thing to do in any brand, especially a legacy heritage brand, to come in and appeal to a new customer base whilst not alienating the loyalists who have been there the whole way,” says Jodie Harrison, Belstaff’s chief brand officer.
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With our web and POS unified through Shopify, we feel good about how our technology can help us achieve our goals as a brand,
Unifying their infrastructure on Shopify changed the game. Retail, DTC, and eventually wholesale now run on one platform, with Shopify POS providing consistent reliability in stores. A custom app lets staff and shoppers preview engraving at the counter and generates same-day work orders.
Product updates and inventory now appear across web, customer service, and POS at the same time, giving teams a single, current picture of stock and variants.
The results show up where it matters most: peak season and high-touch services. Once-frequent POS outages during Q4 have been eliminated. The engraving workflow shifted from a multi-day, back-and-forth process to instant preview and same-day job creation.
“We have ambitious growth plans for the next few years, so being on a platform that we’re confident can enable us to grow in the ways we want to is really important. With our web and POS unified through Shopify, we feel good about how our technology can help us achieve our goals as a brand,” says Lindsey Warren-Shriner, director of strategic initiatives at Simon Pearce.
Parachute
Parachute outgrew a custom tech stack as they expanded from DTC into retail stores. But they encountered a few issues:
- Multiple POS systems made checkout inconsistent.
- Inventory updates lagged across channels.
- A home-built checkout added unnecessary risk and maintenance costs.
Keeping the stack alive required a 15-person engineering team, diverting resources away from brand building or customer relationships.
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The platform’s ecosystem of tools has been key in helping us maintain the quality, consistency, and personalization that define Venus et Fleur’s approach.
The brand moved to a unified setup on Shopify, to run ecommerce, retail, and social commerce on one platform. They then connected their order management system (OMS) and ERP through Shopify’s APIs, ensuring that orders, inventory, and customer data stay synchronized.
Checkout now includes a calendar for specific delivery dates and personalized card messages, with the same delivery date selection extended to Shopify POS as a UI extension. In stores, staff use POS to run promotions like gift with purchase and complimentary shipping, and the system requires only one day of training.
“Shopify has streamlined our operations by enabling us to manage all of our sales channels in one place. The platform’s ecosystem of tools has been key in helping us maintain the quality, consistency, and personalization that define Venus et Fleur’s approach, ensuring that we can continue to scale while fulfilling our vision as a luxury omnichannel retailer,” says Brendan Gorman, head of ecommerce at Venus et Fleur.
With unified data, ecommerce AOV has grown 10%–15% year over year for three straight years. Customers acquired through the Shop App spend about 15% more than website buyers. The delivery-date calendar cut abandoned checkouts by more than 12%.
👉 Read Venus et Fleur’s story.
Orlebar Brown
Apparel and accessories brand Orlebar Brown has a global reach, with over 50 stores and 70% of sales outside their home market. With a fragmented stack, the brand faced issues with inconsistent customer data and slow operational changes, which hindered the customer experience.
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I love that I can access Shopify POS anywhere and process payments right at clients’ homes without worrying about paying extra fees.
Owner Sat Gurumukh Khalsa had nearly zero visibility into his business. For example, seeing Santa Fe’s sales from Albuquerque required remote desktop access, and customer emails collected at checkout had to be retyped into the marketing platform. Sat Gurumukh summed up their goal in three words: “Simplification, simplification, simplification.”
The move to Shopify solved Sukhmani Designs’ issues. With a unified operating system:
- Teams now see real-time sales, inventory, and customer history across locations without logging in to store computers.
- Email signups are captured as part of the purchase flow and directly integrated with the marketing system.
- Sales tax is calculated automatically per location and reflected in reports.
- Shopify Tap to Pay turned in-home consultations into profitable transactions.
“I love that I can access Shopify POS anywhere and process payments right at clients’ homes without worrying about paying extra fees,” Sat Gurumukh says.
Growth followed the brand’s operational cleanup. Revenue increases by 38% year over year, email engagement runs three to four times above industry averages, and on-location selling is simpler and cheaper with a mobile POS.
“Shopify has created more possibilities for sustainability and scalability, allowing us to work on our business instead of just in it. That’s how you build something that lasts,” says Sat Gurumukh.
👉 Read Sukhmani Designs’ story.
RUDSAK
Apparel retailer RUDSAK built their brand on high-touch in-store service. The legacy setup—which used Microsoft Dynamics 365 for POS while online data lived elsewhere—was hard to sustain as the brand evolved.
