7 Unified Commerce Examples That Fuse Online and In-Store Experiences

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:

1. Belstaff
2. Simon Pearce
3. Parachute
4. Venus et Fleur
5. Orlebar Brown
6. Sukhmani Designs
7. RUDSAK

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.

I’ve been on projects where it's taken 12 to 18 months to roll out omnichannel capabilities. Whereas with Shopify, we did it in four months,

Belstaff was running ecommerce, POS, and ERP on separate, monolithic systems with expensive IT outsourcing and growing technical debt. Q4 ambitions ran into inflexible technology that couldn’t move fast. Leadership set the goal to unify in-store and online experiences and reach new audiences. 

This involved a successful migration to Shopify, which let the brand unify ecommerce and POS, integrated with NetSuite through a single connection. The team saw benefits like:

• Gaining a central view of customers and orders
• Real-time publishing across channels
• Smart order routing that reduced split shipments and overhead

Since moving to Shopify, the brand has seen an improvement in speed to market, a decrease in TCO, and an increase in conversion. 

“Shopify delivers the ultimate unified commerce experience under one easy-to-use platform. You can’t underestimate just how much easier that makes things. I’ve been on projects where it's taken 12 to 18 months to roll out omnichannel capabilities. Whereas with Shopify, we did it in four months,” says Navid Jilow, Belstaff director of technology. 

👉 Read Belstaff’s story. 

Simon Pearce

Home and garden brand Simon Pearce runs a busy operation. They have 13 stores, a growing DTC site, and over 400 wholesale partners—not to mention an extremely busy gifting season that puts heavy pressure on operations every year. The company’s previous mix of ecommerce, POS, and B2B tools tied to an aging ERP led to recurring store outages in Q4 and a product customization process halted by emails and paper forms. 

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.

👉 Read Simon Pearce’s story. 

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. 

With Shopify POS, we now have a single point of truth for our inventory, which makes everything flow much more smoothly,

Parachute opted for a unified setup on Shopify, bringing key benefits immediately. “Being able to unify our tech stack and lower its footprint has changed what we can do as a company,” says Ariel Kaye, founder of Parachute. “This creates more focus for us and allows us to spend our resources building differentiating features instead of basic functionality, while reducing risk.”

The team benefited from real-time inventory across all their channels, handheld POS units for events, and adding buy online, pick up in-store (BOPIS) and ship-from-store options for fulfillment. With a fresh and effective operating system, Parachute saw:

• Retail AOV up 12% over five years
• BOPIS revenue increased 5x in four years
• Over $1 million per year saved in operational costs

Staff onboarding is faster, and associates can personalize outreach using unified customer profiles. “With Shopify POS, we now have a single point of truth for our inventory, which makes everything flow much more smoothly,” says Ariel.

👉 Read Parachute’s story. 

Venus et Fleur

As floral retailer Venus et Fleur expanded their business to include physical retail, operations became more complex. Managing inventory across online and store locations during peak gifting seasons became difficult. Customer profiles were fragmented across touchpoints, making it hard to personalize offers and reward loyal shoppers consistently. The team needed a single view of customers and stock that would hold up under seasonal surges.

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. 

As we aim to provide a tailored and personalized experience to our customers, Shopify Markets enables us to recognize them through our Shopify POS and access their purchase history.

“It was challenging for us to seamlessly integrate accurate customer data across various touchpoints, which impeded our ability to fully understand what improvements could be made in the business,” says Jamie De Cesare, chief technology officer at Orlebar Brown. Not to mention the challenges of managing currencies and taxes when selling cross-border. 

Orlebar Brown wanted to deliver personalized experiences across every channel, without adding to the tech burden. The team moved to Shopify to access its growing unified commerce toolkit:

• Shopify Payments and Managed Markets streamlined cross-border operations from one platform.
• Shopify POS gave store teams a reliable workflow and access to customer history. 
• Associates could fulfill orders from another store if stock wasn’t locally available. 

“As we aim to provide a tailored and personalized experience to our customers, Shopify Markets enables us to recognize them through our Shopify POS and access their purchase history. This allows us to customize their visit, fostering better conversations and building stronger relationships,” Jamie adds. 

The unified architecture has helped Orlebar Brown achieve 30%–40% lower TCO, a 66% increase in basket-to-checkout rate after implementing Shopify Payments, and 44% of online customers recognized as existing Shop Pay users. 

👉 Read Orlebar Brown’s story. 

Sukhmani Designs

Sukhmani Designs started off as a wholesale business that grew into a two-store retail outfit. As with most retail growth, the tech stack couldn’t keep up—QuickBooks POS was used in stores, with a separate processor and accounting system, and WordPress for the online store. 

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. 

If you’re a growing company that’s looking to be solutions-oriented, Shopify POS is the system to consider for its simplicity, ease of use, and seamless ecommerce integration.

Store associates couldn’t reliably retrieve customer data, leading to less-tailored shopping experiences. The team also spent time manually connecting datasets together with plugins and scripts that broke over the most minor errors. Plus, slow transaction times and outdated hardware worked against the luxury experience RUDSAK promises. 

“As a luxury brand, we’re not in the business of selling outerwear; we’re in the business of acquiring customers,” says Rani Hawli, RUDSAK’s chief financial officer. “It’s essential that we provide each customer with a seamless and personal journey at every touchpoint, regardless of location.”

Enough was enough. RUDSAK made the switch to Shopify POS to unify their customer database and take advantage of clienteling tools for floor staff. 

After the migration, associates could use tablets to pull up profiles in the moment, answer specific follow-ups (“How did you like the black jacket you bought last season?”), and arrange pickup or ship-to-home when size or color isn’t in stock. Training was quick, with most staff up and running after about two hours, so change management didn’t drag down stores.

Today, RUDSAK captures almost twice as much customer data. Transactions in-store are roughly 50% faster and average under a minute, with post-purchase tasks like returns and warranty lookups becoming simpler because purchase history lives in the POS. As Rani explains about the brand's past system, “We can put that behind us and focus on the business at hand, prioritize the customer journey, and deliver an exceptional product.” 

“If you’re a growing company that’s looking to be solutions-oriented, Shopify POS is the system to consider for its simplicity, ease of use, and seamless ecommerce integration.” says Rani.

👉 Read RUDSAK’s story.

The technology that powers a unified platform 

A unified platform has four components that share one data model, so changes in one place show up everywhere. The pieces may seem obvious, but the value comes from how they work together:

1. A flexible point-of-sale system: The POS runs on mobile devices and retail hardware but uses the same product, price, and customer records as the online store. Associates can see purchase history, check stock across locations, and complete pickup or ship-to-customer in one cart.
2. Centralized inventory management: A single ledger spans warehouses, stores, and online channels and updates the moment items are sold, returned, transferred, or reserved. Routing rules select the best fulfillment node (nearest store, lowest cost, SLA) to reduce split shipments and overselling. 
3. A single customer data profile: Each shopper has one profile that combines online and in-person orders, returns, preferences, and consent. Real-time segments are available to POS, marketing, and service so promotions, clienteling, and support stay consistent.
4. Integrated marketing and analytics tools: Email, automations, and discounts read from the same customer and order data, so rules defined once apply across every channel. Reporting breaks out performance by channel, location, segments, and more without exports.

Getting started with unified commerce on Shopify

Retail changes fast, and disjointed systems don’t. What helps is a partner to help run your operations in one place, with a roadmap and a global team focused on continuous improvement. Shopify isn’t just a POS vendor or website builder, it’s a unified commerce platform that can give you cleaner data, faster launches, and steadier costs.