The story of Simon Pearce began in Ireland, where the company's founder opened his first glass shop in 1971. A decade later, Simon and his wife moved to the United States, settling in Quechee, Vermont, where they transformed an old woolen mill into a glassblowing workshop, retail store, and farm-to-table restaurant. Today, the Mill remains their flagship retail location, welcoming thousands of visitors who come to watch master glassblowers at work, dine in their restaurant, and shop their handcrafted glass and pottery.
From this historic mill, the brand has grown to include 13 retail locations across the northeastern US, 400 wholesale partners including Neiman Marcus, and a growing ecommerce presence. While their primary manufacturing remains in Vermont, with additional manufacturing and warehouse operations in Maryland, every piece is still handmade by skilled makers, maintaining the commitment to quality that has defined Simon Pearce from the beginning.
But managing this growth while maintaining their high standards for customer experience required more than just skilled craftspeople. It demanded a technology foundation that could unify their retail, ecommerce, and wholesale operations. By replatforming to Shopify, Simon Pearce has transformed their operations and seen compelling results:
- Consolidated three separate systems into one unified commerce platform
- Reduced custom engraving approval process from multi-day email workflow to instant online and in-store digital preview and same-day work order creation
- Improved inventory accuracy by moving from once-daily updates to real-time tracking in stores
- Established consistent system reliability by eliminating frequent POS outages that previously disrupted store operations, particularly during peak holiday shopping
The Challenge: Breaking free from fragmented systems
Before Shopify, Simon Pearce operated on a complex web of disconnected systems—ecommerce, point of sale (POS), and B2B—all of which had to integrate with an outdated ERP system, which made it increasingly difficult to scale their business.
The most pressing issue was system reliability, particularly during peak seasons. Their POS system experienced outages during crucial selling periods, especially during Q4 when holiday shopping and their signature evergreens drive significant sales volume. "It would just be out, not functioning for brief periods here and there," says Lindsey Warren-Shriner, Director of Strategic Initiatives at Simon Pearce.
Customer experience was equally compromised by these fragmented systems. Custom engraving, a signature service, required stores to use a cumbersome process of paper forms and email exchanges. "We had emails and paper forms that we were getting from stores," explains Lindsey. "The store would help the customer fill out what they wanted, get a picture, and we'd go back and forth with them to get the proof approved." Even basic inventory management was problematic, with stock levels only updating once per day, making it difficult for staff to confidently assist customers.
These technical limitations weren't just creating inefficiencies—they were holding the brand back from delivering the premium experience their handcrafted products deserved. With ambitious growth plans and a new store on the horizon, Simon Pearce needed a technology foundation that could match the quality of their craftsmanship.
The Solution: Unifying retail, DTC, and B2B on Shopify
After evaluating their options, Simon Pearce chose to consolidate their retail and ecommerce operations onto Shopify's unified commerce platform, later adding their wholesale business to complete the unification. The team developed custom solutions to maintain their high-touch customer experience while simplifying their technology stack.
The most immediate improvement came in system reliability. With Shopify POS, the frequent outages that had plagued their retail locations became a thing of the past. The platform's cloud-based architecture ensures consistent performance even during peak seasons, giving store staff the confidence they need to serve customers without interruption.
Custom engraving, a signature service that previously required manual processing, was transformed through a custom app built by Shopify Plus agency Riess Group using App Bridge, the JavaScript SDK for Embedded Apps that provides access to data and UI rendering within the Shopify Admin. "Now customers can see the preview right there in the POS, and it goes straight into our system and creates work orders for the engraving team," says Lindsey. "It's not this completely outside-of-the-system process that it was before." The app leverages Shopify's website customizer within POS, allowing Simon Pearce to maintain consistent product customization across their ecommerce and retail channels without duplicate setup.
Gift messaging, another crucial service for this gifting-focused brand, is handled through a custom POS UI extension developed by Riess Group that collects gift box and gift message information during checkout. As a company where gifting represents a significant portion of their business, especially during Q4, this streamlined gift information collection has been particularly valuable.
The platform has also brought new efficiency to inventory management. Unlike their previous system's once-daily updates, Shopify provides real-time inventory visibility in stores. This improvement, combined with unified product management for web and retail, has made it significantly easier to maintain accurate stock levels and serve customers across channels. "Publishing a product or updating product details shows up on the web for customers to see, in our customer service team's UI, and in the point of sale," explains Kyle Tuttle, Director of Technical Products at Simon Pearce. "It's one update that hits all channels, which gives the team more confidence about where a product can be found, whether it's in a specific store or warehouse or anywhere else."
Publishing a product or updating product details shows up on the web for customers to see, in our customer service team's UI, and in the point of sale. It's one update that hits all channels, which gives the team more confidence about where a product can be found, whether it's in a specific store or warehouse or anywhere else.
The Results: Improved reliability fuels scalable success
The move to unified commerce has enabled Simon Pearce to match their technology capabilities with the premium quality of their handcrafted products. Store staff now have complete confidence in their inventory data and can better serve customers across all channels. The engraving process, once manual and time-consuming, is now streamlined and integrated directly into their point of sale system.
The platform's reliability has been particularly valuable during peak seasons. "We're a fairly seasonal business, with gifting being a big part of what we do," says Lindsey. "Q4 is our biggest season, especially around Black Friday and Cyber Monday." Where their previous system struggled with outages during these crucial periods, Shopify has provided the stability needed to capitalize on their busiest times.
With Shopify, Simon Pearce now has a technology foundation that can support their vision for the future.
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 to achieve our goals as a brand.