In 2015, Melissa Nelson opened Starlight Knitting Society, a neighborhood yarn shop in Portland, Oregon with a simple mission: foster community through quality yarns, excellent service, and a welcoming atmosphere. What began as a local brick-and-mortar store has evolved into a nationally recognized brand that sets industry trends through innovative product offerings and events like their annual Camp Starlight retreat.
But as Starlight grew and online sales became increasingly important, Melissa found herself struggling with disconnected systems for the brand's website, point-of-sale (POS), and inventory management. "I knew for years that I needed to change what we were doing with these systems, but I couldn't wrap my head around what felt like such a massive undertaking," recalls Melissa. Fortunately, through her partnership with development agency ICEE Social, she found the solution she needed in Shopify. And despite her initial concerns, the transition to a single, unified commerce platform proved far smoother than expected.
Since replatforming to Shopify, Starlight Knitting Society has:
- Reduced inventory management time by two hours per day and eliminated daily reconciliation tasks
- Saved additional 2-3 hours per day on product listing tasks
- Streamlined management of loyalty program across all channels
- Enabled same-day training for seasonal staff on POS system
- Established strong organic search presence with growth from zero to 4,400+ daily Google impressions
The Challenge: Managing growth with legacy systems
As Starlight Knitting Society's reputation grew beyond their Portland neighborhood, so did the complexity of their operations. Their original website, built on Squarespace, was designed simply to help local customers find the shop and sign up for classes. But as online sales became a larger part of their business, the limitations of running disconnected systems became apparent.
"We had our POS system, Lightspeed, and our website on Squarespace, with two completely separate inventory systems," says Melissa. "We had to manually remove inventory from each system every time we had a sale." This fragmentation led to frequent stockouts and disappointed customers with canceled orders. "We often sold items online that we did not actually have, and had to disappoint customers on a regular basis."
The challenges extended beyond inventory management. Their loyalty program required manual tracking through spreadsheets, gift cards couldn't be used across both platforms, and basic customer service tasks consumed hours of staff time. "The amount of work it took to make sure customers were being taken care of with basic services was driving us all to the brink!" Melissa recalls.
We were spending so much time on the issues created by our fragmented systems that we couldn't focus on crafting samples, putting together marketing opportunities, and training staff for better customer service.
The Solution: Shopify helps bring it all together
After years of managing disconnected systems, Starlight Knitting Society found their path forward in Shopify's unified platform, where all their business data could flow through a single source of truth.
I chose Shopify because I learned how comprehensive the system was for both POS and our web presence. I needed something that was going to continue to allow us to grow and not need to be changed again.
Working with Shopify Partner agency ICEE Social, Starlight executed a successful platform migration that established their first real presence in search results, thanks to proper technical SEO implementation. They also quickly addressed their core operational challenges, taking advantage of the platform's unified inventory system to eliminate the need for manual reconciliation between online and in-store sales. Their loyalty program, previously managed through spreadsheets, now automatically tracks customer purchases across all channels. Even their class registration system has been integrated into the platform, eliminating yet another separate system to manage.
The team has also realized immense value from Shopify's retail solutions.
My favorite thing about Shopify POS is that I can train someone on how to use it in minutes. If I need extra help in my store for an event or the holidays, I can rest assured that they will be able to give the same level of service to my customers that my long-time employees do.
Shopify POS enabled new conveniences for customers as well. The "ship to customer" and "save cart" features help out-of-town visitors purchase more than their luggage can handle, while the pickup in store option has become popular for new product releases and pre-orders. "We use these features daily," says Melissa. "When we have new product releases or pre-orders, we find that folks want to make sure they can get the hot item before anyone else."
The Results: More time for what's important
The impact of unifying on Shopify has been transformative for both operations and customer experience at Starlight Knitting Society. By bringing their entire business onto a single platform, they've achieved significant efficiency gains while enhancing their ability to serve customers. The most immediate impact has been on staff time and operational efficiency. Melissa reports that compared to their time before Shopify, the team now saves two hours daily on inventory management and an additional two to three hours on product listing tasks. Daily inventory adjustments, once a constant necessity, have become rare occurrences.
My team now has time to beautify the shop, make samples, and personal shop for folks via email or phone. They told me that the time that switching to Shopify freed up for them felt like they were getting a bonus.
Shopify has also helped improve Melissa's ability to understand and grow the business through an ability to see real-time data across all channels. "Tracking where our sales are coming from and understanding which types of promotions and advertisements actually bring in sales has changed the way I have been ordering inventory," Melissa explains. "We can better accommodate what our customers are looking for."
Customer experience has improved significantly as well. The automated loyalty program ensures customers get credit for all their purchases regardless of channel, while features like local pickup and ship-to-customer provide the flexibility modern shoppers expect. "We're finally able to tell customers accurately if we have enough of a color or yarn for their project," notes Melissa. "And our class registration process is streamlined now that everything is in one place."
Looking ahead, Starlight Knitting Society is positioned for new levels of growth. While their previous site wasn't optimized for search engines, they're now seeing thousands of daily Google impressions through proper indexing, establishing a strong organic search presence for the first time. "We're extremely excited about the marketing opportunities that await us," says Melissa. "We've barely scratched the surface of what Shopify is capable of, and we intend to tap into the market further through targeted advertising with the help of all the unified sales channels."
Knowing that our brand, which is heavily reliant on the company culture and in-person vibe, can translate onto the web using Shopify's tools has been transformative. We're finally able to serve all our customers, local and not, with the same level of service.