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About the Client

The Souled Store Logo

The Souled Store is a casual apparel wear brand, based in India. It is a manufacturer and retailer of a wide range of quirky apparel, mobile accessories, backpacks, badges, etc. that are designed with pop-culture themes like superheroes, movies, cartoons, TV shows, and more. It is India’s largest brand for official, licensed merchandise for sports teams, comedians, and musicians with licenses from Disney, WWE, IPL teams, ViaCom18, etc. The company has 7 million monthly visitors to its digital channels (web & mobile).

Country

India

Industry

eCommerce

Mobile app development and omnichannel strategy for the Souled Store

Business Situation

The Souled Store aimed to broaden its presence by transitioning from solely online stores to establishing physical locations nationwide. The goal was to provide an omnichannel experience to customers across both digital and physical platforms. They struggled to maintain a unified inventory management system, which led to discrepancies in stock availability. Products often appeared as available online but were out of stock in physical stores. Additionally, the company was relying on a third-party Point-of-Sale (POS) system with limited customization. They needed an advanced POS system that could support cross-channel loyalty programs, consistent pricing and promotions, unified customer profiles, and easy returns and refunds.

To rapidly adjust to changing business dynamics, The Souled Store also needed to enhance their fulfillment capabilities. This included omnichannel fulfillment options like BOPIS (Buy Online, Pick Up In Store) and BORIS (Buy Online, Return In Store), which eliminate the hassle of repackaging items and making additional stops at the post office. They also needed flexible shipped returns to various locations. These issues were hindering the company’s ability to seamlessly integrate its online and offline channels, resulting in missed opportunities for customer engagement, decreased operational efficiency, and a fragmented brand image.

To further expand their omnichannel strategy, The Souled Store aimed to develop a mobile app. This app would serve as a platform to unify the online and offline shopping experiences, providing customers with a seamless and convenient way to engage with the brand, whether they are shopping from their smartphones or visiting a physical store. However, the development of this app presents additional challenges, requiring careful planning and execution to ensure it aligns with the company’s overall brand strategy and operational goals.

To achieve their goals, The Souled Store collaborated with Daffodil Software due to our unparalleled expertise in developing robust e-commerce platforms for a global clientele.

The key requirements were to:

Develop a mobile app that serves as a central hub for customers, offering features such as product browsing, purchasing, order tracking, and customer support.

Employ a user-centric design approach to create an intuitive and engaging interface for both the mobile app and the website.

Replace the third-party POS system with a custom-built or integrated solution that seamlessly connects with the online store and inventory management system.

Develop a centralized inventory management system that synchronizes stock levels across both, online and physical stores in real-time.

Implement robust security measures to protect customer data and transaction information.

The Solution

Our team conducted an in-depth analysis of core functionalities, user flow, and technical infrastructure, gathering detailed specifications from The Souled Store to ensure a tailored solution. We developed an intuitive interface using React Native for the front end, ensuring a dynamic and seamless user experience across both Android and iOS platforms. 

For the backend, we used Python to create a robust and efficient system capable of handling real-time interactions and managing large volumes of data. AWS was chosen to host the application, providing a reliable, scalable, and secure environment. This infrastructure ensured high performance and availability, meeting the demands of The Souled Store’s expanding customer base.

Our comprehensive approach ensured that the mobile application not only integrated smoothly with their existing e-commerce infrastructure but also provided a unified and engaging shopping experience, enhancing customer satisfaction and operational efficiency.

We incorporated various key features: 

Split Day Delivery:

Our team developed a split-day delivery capability for Souled Store, providing customers the convenience of receiving orders in multiple shipments throughout the day. This feature allows orders to be divided and fulfilled from different stores or warehouses, ensuring that customers receive their items as quickly as possible. If a single store cannot fulfill the entire order by the desired time, the order can be split and sourced from multiple locations to meet the delivery schedule. This split-day delivery solution enhanced operational efficiency through optimized order processing and resource management.

Developed a split-day delivery capability
Advanced In-House POS System and M-POS System:

Daffodil Software designed and build a tailor-made, in-house POS system specifically for Souled Store. This solution replaced the third-party POS system, offering increased flexibility, control, and integration capabilities. The development team collaborated closely with Souled Store’s business and IT teams to understand their operational workflows and design an intuitive and user-friendly interface. The custom POS system streamlined sales processes, enable real-time data inventory Also, the Daffodil team has designed and developed the mPOS feature in the souled store mobile app which works similarly to the store POS system. This mPOS system empowered the store employees of the Souled store such that they can move freely in the store environment and help customers with checkout, inventory management, and access to product information without sticking to the counter.

Designed and build a tailor-made, in-house POS system
Flexible Omni-channel Fulfillment:

The Daffodil Software team worked with user experience teams to ensure a consistent and seamless customer experience across offline and online channels. The development team aligned the user interfaces and features of the online platform and physical stores, creating a unified brand image and delivering a cohesive omnichannel experience. This includes replicating personalized recommendations, BOPAS (buy online and pick up at store), BORIS (buy online, return in store) and buy offline and get online, return and replace at any platform, a smooth checkout process with loyalty programs and convenient browsing features in offline stores. By implementing this solution, Souled Store enhanced customer satisfaction, improve brand loyalty, and provide a consistent experience irrespective of the channel used by the customers.

Designed Flexible Omni-channel Fulfillment
Hyperlocal E-Commerce:

The Daffodil team developed a capability of hyper-local e-commerce for Souled store where a customer wants an order on the same day. The order can be fulfilled from the nearest store. Also, if the store does not have time to deliver they can transfer the order to another nearest store. The Hyperlocal e-commerce solution made the delivery process faster and resulted in increased sales and a great omnichannel customer experience for the customers. The Hyperlocal solution also increased operational efficiency. The Hyperlocal e-commerce solution improved operational efficiency by 28% by fastening the order process and efficient resource management. Also, the delivery cost was reduced to deliver an order within the city and The Souled Store was able to charge their customers for the fast delivery.

Developed Hyperlocal E-Commerce for Same-day Delivery

The Impact

By implementing this solution, Souled Store is equipped with a synchronized inventory management system, a customized in-house POS system, and a seamless offline-to-online customer experience and hyper local ecommerce. These improvements enabled the company to offer a truly omnichannel shopping experience, optimize operational efficiency, enhance customer satisfaction, reduce dead stocks and strengthen its position in the competitive e-commerce market. Additionally, we developed a mobile app that significantly enhanced the customer experience by providing an easy-to-use platform for shopping, tracking orders, and receiving personalized offers. This mobile app has been a key factor in growing Souled Store’s customer base to over 7 million users.

Moreover, this strong setup has prepared Souled Store for international expansion, making it easier to manage and grow its business in new countries. Currently, Souled Store operates more than 22 stores across India. Now with the increased retail business, they have targeted to expand and open 100 stores across the country. Daffodil Software’s development team will provide ongoing support and maintenance for the implemented solutions. The team will be actively monitoring the systems, ensuring they remain efficient, secure, and up-to-date. Regular updates and enhancements will be rolled out based on user feedback and emerging industry trends. The development team will also offer comprehensive training and documentation to ensure Souled Store’s staff can fully utilize the solutions and adapt to any future changes or expansions.

2.2B

Funding Raised

7M

Customer Base

2.5M

Monthly Online Orders

22+

Stores Across India

500+

Team Size

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