From Bricks to Clicks with Lightspeed | Dante’s Fine Foods
Managing inventory when you’re selling over 2,000 products is no small task. So when Vicki Grootscholten decided to expand into e-commerce, she needed an online store that would merge with her brick-and-mortar shop into one streamlined system.
The Challenge
Step inside Dante’s Fine Foods and you’re instantly transported around the world, shelves lined with exotic foods from every far-flung corner of the globe. Dante’s story began when manager Vicki Grootscholten’s family had trouble finding the quality foods they had enjoyed in their native Netherlands. What started as a quest to fill their own pantry eventually grew into a fully-fledged business, now boasting over 2,000 products from over 30 countries around the world. And now Dante’s is branching out beyond its Cambridge (NZ) location and looking to serve a much wider clientele online.
Dante’s initial website was a modest affair: just a single page with contact details and a brief introduction. The one-pager was only ever meant to be a stopgap measure, but it was only after hiring extra staff that Vicki was finally able to find the time to branch out into online retail. Setting up an online shop was going to take a much bigger, beefier website than she currently had, so she began scouting around for a new website provider. And her number one priority? “I wanted my online store and point of sale to work together,” Vicki explains. She’d heard from others that updating inventory was the biggest headache of “bricks-and-clicks” retail—a headache she was keen to avoid.
Enter Rocketspark. Vicki had met Rocketspark’s account manager, Greg Wallace, through a local business networking event and ended up choosing Rocketspark after consulting with about a half-dozen other firms. The fact that Rocketspark quoted the best price was only ever a bonus for Vicki, never the determining factor. What she really loved was that Rocketspark’s online shop meshed with Lightspeed point-of-sale software. That would give her the fully integrated online/in-store system that she was looking for.
The Outcome
With the online shop now up and running, Dante’s website is so much more than just an “online business card”—it’s a way to sell even more of her delicious foods. And although getting set up with an online shop still involves some work, maintaining it is something she can take care of herself with minimal hassle. Vicki points out that business owners don’t want to have to call their web firm every single time they want to make a small change. “Rocketspark is really great because it’s so easy to use.”
“Customers love it,” Vicki says, referring to the new online shop. Even her Cambridge regulars like it. “They say they’ve found all these products online that they’ve never seen before and are going to buy it next time they’re in [the Dante’s store].” Vicki is a fan too, appreciating the way Rocketspark and Lightspeed work together seamlessly. In fact, she’s so fond of the integration that she recently switched to Xero as her accounting system, which connects with both Rocketspark and Lightspeed the same way. “They all work together and that’s just great.”
The Rocketspark/Lightspeed integration means that her inventory is updated automatically, taking the sting out of expanding into online retail. It’s early days for the Dante’s online shop, but Vicki is expecting big things. “I want to make lots of sales on my website,” she says with a laugh. “I’m so excited!"
