How Cin7 Bridged the Tech Gap for One Furniture Store with Multiple Sales Channels
Affordable, high-quality furniture that arrives on time and is easy to assemble? That’s Forward Furniture’s promise to its customers, but spreadsheet mayhem made the promise hard to keep. Until Cin7.
Forward Furniture opened its doors in 2019. From its inception, the Canadian company set out to disrupt the traditional furniture retail model by offering efficient, customer-first service and curated products, like its flagship product, the Olivia.
A solid wood cabinet that unfolds into a comfortable queen-sized bed in under 30 seconds, the cabinet beds like the Olivia perfectly represents Forward Furniture’s passion for providing a smart design that solves a real problem. And it all began with flipping furniture on Facebook Marketplace.
“That’s how I started. I saw quite a bit of demand,” says Founder, Owner, and CEO Tyson Ludba. “People were really wanting affordable furniture.”
But selling used furniture online meant a lack of consistent stock along with the need to refurbish certain pieces. Tyson had a better idea. “I started looking into purchasing my own furniture and found some suppliers locally and then overseas and ramped up from there.”
Forward Furniture quickly established their first brick-and-mortar store in Kelowna, British Columbia before opening two more showrooms, one in Calgary, Alberta and another in Edmonton, Alberta. They also built out a strong e-commerce presence to establish Forward Furniture as a differentiated competitor in the marketplace.
“Unlike larger brands who mark up their furniture and make their customers wait for months to get the product, Forward Furniture focuses on getting our affordable products to customers with an average wait time of a week.”
And if there’s an unexpected delay, they let customers know. Right away.
Speedy delivery at a price most people can afford was a game changing move for Forward Furniture, but none of it was possible before Cin7.
From Spreadsheets to Software: Forward Furniture’s Journey to Sitting Pretty
Prior to founding Forward Furniture, Tyson had no experience in running a business. What he did have was sales experience that shaped his initial thoughts on how a business succeeds.
“I thought that if you can sell and get people in the door, you can get sales, but I realized within a few months of running the Kelowna location that it’s the back end that allows you to scale on the front end.”
Tyson struggled with snowballing problems stemming from their reliance on spreadsheets, manual inventory tracking, and ad hoc processes while managing three locations, an e-commerce store, and several 3PLs with tools not designed for growing businesses.
They were:
- Running out of items they thought they had in inventory
- Ordering products they already had in stock
- Thinking a product was on order when it wasn’t (leading to unhappy customers, cancelled orders, and bad reviews)
- Handling intercompany transfers with disconnected systems
- Lacking real-time financial numbers
“If you can’t fulfill orders on time, don’t know what your profit is or your cost of goods are, what inventory you have or the timeframe for when new stock’s coming in, then you’re going to have issues.”
Just like putting furniture together with directions that confuse rather than enlighten, Forward Furniture’s accumulating errors were leading them down the path to frustration.
The answer?
Find a single, centralized solution with multi-location and multi-warehouse capabilities, alignment between e-commerce and retail inventory, and the ability to integrate with QuickBooks to support clean financials. On the recommendation of their accountant they chose Cin7.
"I wanted a system that would work across the board,” Tyson explains. “I wanted something that would be able to manage everything. With Cin7 we can manage all our separate locations underneath one umbrella and it is very, very helpful.”
Putting a Furniture Business Together the Right Way
Implementing Cin7 set off a chain reaction of benefits.
Their inability to see how much inventory they had in every location turned into crystal clear visibility. They no longer suffered from stockouts and understocking. And manual inventory takes? Let’s just say running to the warehouse was not their regular form of exercise anymore.
With Cin7 acting as its glorified Allen wrench, Forward Furniture enjoys data-driven replenishment aligned to sell rate, which is critical with 3-4 month furniture lead times and ensures just-right inventory at all times. They’ve also ensured that their customer-favorite products are always on hand, saving themselves a bit of cash in the process.
“We now avoid multi-month gaps in our bestselling products. These gaps can cost tens of thousands or more in lost revenue.”
As for dead stock, it’s not even a thing, with Cin7 helping them identify slow movers so they can discount strategically and improve turnover.
“The fact that we didn’t have real-time accurate books or inventory tracking made it difficult to not be able to reorder properly,” says Tyson. “But once we had that inventory visibility with Cin7 and we could see what we actually have and we can actually see our sales volume per product, that allowed us to have reordering accuracy.”
Stock transfers and intercompany transfers between locations became simpler and more reliable, especially when accounting for shipping costs and price discrepancies, creating perfect alignment between their online and physical stores. “The biggest thing for me is that I know that everything is getting tracked properly on the back end, where I don’t have to worry about it being done properly.”
And gaining confidence in their data didn’t hurt either.
“Having actual trustworthy data allows us to make better decisions that aren’t based on gut feel. It’s been a game changer with happier customers, better reordering, and more sales by direct proportion.”
No Gathering Dust with Cin7
Growing Forward Furniture is no longer a dream. It’s the plan. Expanding their current product line up, opening new retail locations, and leaning into their online presence are all next steps, thanks to Cin7.
Cin7 syncs the company’s sales, inventory, purchasing, and financial information in one place. And Lightspeed, a cloud-based point-of-sale (POS) and commerce platform that integrates with Cin7, is a major part of Forward Furniture’s strategy for continued success.
“We implemented Lightspeed before Cin7, and it worked really, really well,” Tyson says. “It’s very strong on an individual company basis, and Cin7 bridged that gap to where I could log into Cin7 and see all of the locations, including our e-commerce. The integration allowed us to merge everything into one place and make decisions on reliable data.”
For Forward Furniture, Cin7 is the timesaving, stress-reducing, and cash-flow improving propellant fueling its operational efficiency and future growth.
“Cin7 is going to allow us to scale without running into bottlenecks. Having all our systems dialed in at one location makes everything smoother and easier.”
