In 2010 two women in Singapore launched a fashion boutique ‘Nana & Bird’ from their apartment as an invitational pop-up store. They didn’t expect that 3 years later they would have two brands and three stores, with definitive plans to take over the world.

Nana and Bird was born simply out of two people’s love of shopping, Georgina Koh ‘Nana’ and Chiew Ling, ‘Bird’, with not an IT or retail expert insight. Doing things in an unconventional way, mostly due to lack of funds, was their approach from the get go. According to Georgina, they were “bootstrapping from the start. We decided that it is easy to experiment with a once a month pop-up store concept. And so I opened the “shop” one weekend in my apartment in the Tiong Bahru neighbourhood,” says Georgina. “And we have not looked back since.”

Listening to customer feedback, the duo took advantage of the demand for a flexible way of shopping and soon expanded their pop-up shopping environment from Georgina’s apartment, to different locations like a spa and gallery. “And we started building our customer base at the same time,” Georgina adds. “Singaporeans were ready for a different retail experience, apart from department stores and malls, and we had great feedback on the experience of such a personal shopping experience – since they are literally shopping in a friend’s closet!”

A whole year of pop-up retailing went by until Nana & Bird took on a physical retail store in 2011. The team now have another concept store, two.or.i, and will soon be launching a 3rd retail space, another Nana & Bird boutique. “Our goal is to bring the Nana & Bird brand overseas and to extend our retail presence to other cities around Asia and the rest of the world,” says Georgina. “We want to be known as a leading multi-label boutique alongside the big boys like Bird in Brooklyn, Opening Ceremony, Dover Street Market.”

Using Vend POS Nana & Bird has the support it needs to step away from admin and focus on ways to streamline its operations, save time, and grow.

The things Georgina likes best about running her store with Vend are:

• Inventory management – “Vend is a great inventory management system. As a multi-label store, managing inventory across different product types and brands can be quite challenging without a proper system.”  “With Vend, the inventory management that is synced up with the POS is a godsend to us. It helped save time reconciling inventory levels, where the time could be better spent in other areas of our work like marketing and CRM.”
• Customer loyalty – “With built-in loyalty, it’s easy to keep customers coming back. We are also using Vend as a customer database management system to keep track of regular customers.”
• Integrated add-ons – “When the tools scale with you, you know you’re really onto something. The integration with Shopify is a great feature as we build our online retail presence”.
• User friendly – You don’t have to been an IT expert to use Vend. “It is a very easy, simple to use system.”

Tara Benedict, Vend’s Channel Marketing Manager, told us that Nana & Bird is one of her favourite Vend success stories. “My favourite part of my job is being able to interact with so darned many brilliant and innovative entrepreneurs from all over the world. It’s insanely inspiring. I get goose bumps when I hear stories like Nana & Bird’s,” she delights.

Want to find out more about Vend’s retail platform? Read our supplier interview.