Little London Boutique came into being in 1993 and has expanded to its present four store configuration with Boutiques in Chichester, Winchester, Guildford and Tunbridge Wells.

Early on it became obvious that proper stock control was essential as stock is regularly moved inter-store to balance sales.

Before LOIS Little London's owner, Lynne Waller, started with a very simple custom written stock system that worked in principal but was too labour intensive and subject to human error. Little London then acquired two off-the-shelf systems, three years apart. Both  these systems were from large EPOS companies supplying many other well know Fashion Retailers.

“Fashion retailers can be like sheep, if one retailer has it then it must be okay....”

Each system was eventually replaced because of the sheer inability to manage. If the shop staff can’t operate it properly, as it was intended then the whole system is flawed regardless of how clever that system is. Many of Lynne’s staff are part time workers, therefore they might only be putting a handful of transactions a week through the till.Anything slightly complicated and that person is liable to mistakes under point of sale pressure.

“That pressure psychologically un-nerves the staff member and POS Fear Syndrome (PFS) takes effect. Important POS tasks like collection of customer names and addresses gets avoided incase an error occurs.”

Lynne was adamant that any system acquired by Little London for the future had to be workable from right across her staffs ability range, and that training was quick and straight forward due to the industries high turnover of staff.Inside each branch of Little London is supplied a single POS, managing both store transactions, web sales (and those not so popular web sale returns!), + All head office functions. Brand Manager Chantie, can literally start loading an order in Guildford Branch and continue on later when she arrives in Chichester. Internal phones through LOIS VOIP keeps inter store communication free and separate from the public line.

Local CCTV is also streamed off site for Lynne and Management to view as required. “Not only does the system save us money over other systems, it priorities “SELLING” and at no stage stops us taking money. The Web-site is a stable income stream from all over the world that we never thought we could tap into. Reports and instant access to the sales data help me keep my eye on the ball.” says owner Lynne.