In 2004, Mike and Megan Tamte founded EVEREVE imagining a retail brand that could do things differently—one that would move women forward in both their fashion and their lives. Starting with a single store in Edina, Minnesota, EVEREVE now operates more than 100 stores across 30 states, with 2,500 employees, and a thriving ecommerce business complemented by Trendsend, their online styling service.
EVEREVE has transformed the retail experience for women across the US. But over time, maintaining their signature personalized service across a growing network of stores and digital channels required rethinking their approach to retail technology.
By replatforming to Shopify, EVEREVE has enabled a seamless customer experience across all channels and created a foundation for continued growth and innovation. The results have been remarkable. With Shopify, EVEREVE has:
- Launched across 103 stores and 275 POS stations in just eight months
- Increased online conversion rates by 20% year-over-year
- Achieved record-breaking sales day with 36% higher revenue than previous record
- Drove 65% of revenue through Shop Pay with 85% higher AOV
The Challenge: Making integrated systems truly unified
Before Shopify, EVEREVE operated with integrated but separate systems for their retail and online channels. "We had an integrated solution and we built that integration ourselves in-house," explains Tamer Selim, CTO at EVEREVE.
The problem with an integrated solution is that you end up having copies of data and you're spending a lot of time trying to make these two systems have those copies of data.
Tamer notes how EVEREVE in-store experience was far from optimal when he first joined the company. "I went to a store with my wife, all of a sudden it ground to a halt once you got to that cash wrap," he says. "You had this big screen as a divider, you had a keyboard and mouse, and it all of a sudden was all about this transaction. That was something that I immediately felt was not part of our brand." Even payment processing was disjointed—with separate payment platforms for online and in-store purchases, customers couldn't access their saved payment information across channels, creating additional friction at checkout.
This fragmentation impacted customer service. Online and in-store purchase histories lived in separate systems, making it difficult for stylists to provide personalized recommendations based on customers' complete shopping history. "We don't want the experience in stores to be isolated," Tamer notes, emphasizing how customers shouldn't need to create a brand new account online if they've already shopped in-store, and vice versa, but this wasn't the case with their previous technology stack.
On top of these challenges, the technical team spent significant time maintaining and scaling EVEREVE systems, particularly during major sales events. "We had to maintain that platform, scale it ourselves," says Tamer. "That also meant we had to build security, do security patches, and do software upgrades. Those weren't trivial. Those took a significant amount of time from our team." During one Mother's Day sale, their biggest sales day of the year, the systems couldn't handle the volume, creating "an absolute meltdown" that frustrated customers and left the team scrambling to right the ship. With EVEREVE's plans for continued rapid expansion, Tamer and the team could no longer allow scalability to be a barrier to their growth.
The Solution: Achieving "the impossible" with Shopify
EVEREVE undertook an ambitious implementation of Shopify's unified commerce platform, completing the transition in just eight months. This comprehensive transformation included the integration of a new point of sale (POS) system across all 103 retail locations, the launch of a unified e-commerce platform, and the establishment of a real-time customer data system that eliminated data silos, streamlined inventory management, and enhanced email marketing strategies, all while providing a seamless and personalized shopping experience for customers.
"It was an incredibly fast paced implementation. It took everybody to come together to do it," says Tamer. Starting in January, they launched their first store by July, and within six weeks, all 103 stores and 275 Shopify POS stations were live.
One of my teammates was saying that we were asking to do the impossible. And as we reflected on it, I said, 'Well, we showed that it actually is possible.
The most immediate improvement came in the in-store experience. The clunky cash wrap setup was replaced with a sleek, modern interface that better reflected EVEREVE's brand and provided a much improved user experience. "The ability to tilt the tablet towards the customer lets them be part of the transaction," explains Tamer. "Letting them choose their receipt format, it all continues that personal interaction they've had throughout their shopping experience."
Shopify has transformed how stylists serve customers by providing a complete view of shopping history across both in-store and online channels. "Whether you've seen someone in one of our stores and you feel like you have a rapport with them, but then they shop online and you don't have that visibility—you now have that," says Tamer. "You now have the confidence that you have a full view of their purchase history, not that their online purchases are in one account under one email and their in-store purchases are in a different one."
This unified approach has also streamlined operations. Where previously the team spent significant time maintaining systems and managing integrations, they can now focus on innovation.
Now we can have Shopify build the core things that Shopify is really great at, and our team can move to a place where they can innovate and really focus on the things that make the EVEREVE brand special.
The Results: Record sales without the stress
EVEREVE's 20th anniversary sale, which kicked off in November, proved to be a powerful demonstration of their new technology foundation. "It was our single biggest sales day ever. It broke every previous record across both our online and stores channel," says Tamer. "Prior to this, those types of moments would be one of those things where we would white-knuckle it and wonder whether or not the systems could handle it. On this particular day, we had 36 percent higher revenue than our previous single day target."
The brand's new seamless checkout experience has delighted both staff and customers.
I remember when we launched our first POS location and had one of our employees doing our first real transaction. She had barely finished tapping to pay and she got a notification on her phone of her receipt from the Shop App. I still vividly remember that moment, the squeals of glee that we had that this was something that Shopify just did for us.
Shopify has also transformed EVEREVE's online checkout experience. Without any promotion of the feature, 65% of EVEREVE's revenue now comes through Shop Pay, with these transactions showing an average order value 85% higher than manual credit card entries. The brand's overall conversion rate is up 20% year over year.
Looking ahead, EVEREVE can focus on expanding their retail presence with confidence. "Having the tech stack not be our barrier, it's just an area where the rest of our team can be proud of what their contributions are now too," says Tamer. With a reliable technology foundation in place, EVEREVE is focused on continued growth while staying true to their mission of moving women forward in their fashion and in their lives.