Lammle’s Brings Teamwork Commerce to The Calgary Stampede

The ten days that matter most

Most retailers have a busy season. Lammle’s has a countdown.

“When you think of the magnitude of what the Calgary Stampede is, it is a 10 day show,” says Nicole Monte, Chief Operating Officer at Lammle’s Western Wear. “We will see over a million people walk through those gates. It is anything from the rodeo to a music element to games and midway to, of course, retail and shopping, which is where we come in and we support that for them and with them as their partner.”

Lammle’s does not run one shop at the Stampede. It runs eleven.

“Because we’ve got 11 locations on the Stampede grounds, you can’t walk in any direction without having some sort of interaction or engagement with one of the Lammle’s tents,” Nicole says. “And if you’re there and you’re purchasing, now you’re also engaging with the POS system of Teamwork.”

And all of it has to be built from nothing. “We have 10 days to get down there to set up 11 different locations, and that’s all the way from building and constructing the tent to merchandising it to getting the systems in play. So when you think about how quickly we can do that and get online, that is a make it or break it for us.”

Why Lammle’s went looking for a new platform

Lammle’s is the largest western retailer in Canada, with 26 brick and mortar stores throughout Western Canada and the Prairies, an online presence serving customers worldwide, and a calendar full of music festivals and rodeo events.

The legacy system had served the business well. It just could not scale with where the business was going.

“Before we transitioned over to Teamwork, we did have a legacy system that worked really good for where we were at that time,” Nicole says. “We though, as a business looking to scale, needed a partner and a different system that would help allow us to do that, most notably in the e-commerce area.”

The deeper issue was versatility. “When you work in retail, you always have to be ahead of the game. And so when you are customer facing, every minute or every interaction counts with them. We operate brick and mortar, we operate online, and we operate at trade shows. We need to be very versatile in what we are doing and how our setup is, which Teamwork was able to offer a great solution for.”

The demo that decided it

Lammle’s did not rush. The team evaluated systems for roughly six months.

“The reason we loved Teamwork is actually the people that we met along the way,” Nicole says. “When we got our demo with Teamwork, the team actually flew up to Canada and spent two days with us and they walked us through the entire system. They had the whole demo set up. They allowed us to work through the system and use it hands-on in the moment. They were the only ones that did that when we were shopping for the system.”

Buyers, store leaders and back office users were all brought into the room so feedback came in live.

Going live without going dark

After selecting Teamwork, Lammle’s spent another six months building the platform around the specifics of its business, with a full-time internal team working alongside the Teamwork team. Then came the hardest question in retail technology: when.

“When you’re in retail, there’s no slow times,” Nicole says. “There’s no times that you can turn off and do something. And so we really had to plan the right time to go live.” The team deliberately sat on a finished system until Stampede was behind them, then rolled out during a quieter window.

The cutover itself was staged. “I don’t think we had downtime when we did the cutover. We were very strategic in how we set it up, of course, with our Teamwork partners. We would turn on two stores at a time. We would make sure they were up and running properly and working the way we needed them to. And then we would turn on another five stores. So over the course of the week, we had almost our entire fleet turned on and operational.”

Teamwork was physically present for every one of them. “We also had our Teamwork partners boots on the ground. So every location that we turned on, they were on site making sure there was no hiccups for us.”

The store level experience was almost anticlimactic. “We ended up dismantling the evening prior, dismantling our old legacy system, getting our cashiers cleaned up. And then that morning we went in, we set up the Teamwork iPad and the Moneris system of one of our partners and had the system turned on at opening. It was that easy.”

What the Stampede demands

A POS that fits in a back pocket

Eleven tents in ten days changes what “portable” means.

“Having something like a mobile POS that you can put in your back pocket, you can carry all 11 in one go, as opposed to carrying one big POS at a time or POS centre at a time down to set up,” Nicole says.

It changes the footprint of the selling space too. “If you have a legacy system, you’ve got a really big bulky POS system. With Teamwork, you have your option to go iPad or even mobile handheld so you can get rid of your cash desk completely. So one of the things that I’m really looking forward to with Teamwork is being able to eliminate some of our cash desks in those pop-up tents.”

Uptime is revenue, and reputation

“When you are doing something like a trade show, and it’s just as important with your online as it is in your store, the minute you’re down, you’re now not only losing money, but you’re upsetting customers. And those two things are not good in a retail environment,” Nicole says. “So always having a system that performs at peak performance is really important in those moments.”

Configuring each location for its job

A tent on the Stampede grounds is not a flagship store, and Lammle’s does not run it like one.

“What is so great about the Teamwork platform is we are able to customize every location’s experience,” Nicole says. “How we show up for our customers in a brick and mortar is very different than how we show up for them at a trade environment where we are moving through volume. And so when this is their only interaction with us potentially on the year, we’re allowing for a very quick and effective process for them.”

That includes switching off the customer profile capture on the grounds so lines keep moving.

Line management as a growth lever

“You get your top line sales by getting your customers, especially during an event, through the POS as quickly as you possibly can,” Nicole says. “In the past, we’ve had to really navigate how we manage that line. But because of the Teamwork system and how easy it is to use, we’ve been able to minimize the wait time for a lot of our customers. Which for us, there’s more transactions that are going through, which gives us higher top line sales. For the customer, it gives them a better experience, because nobody wants to stand in line and wait for something.”

An on-grounds warehouse that reacts in real time

Lammle’s runs a warehouse directly on the Stampede grounds, printing tags and pulling transfers as sales happen.

“We can not only print tags real time on the spot, which means we can get that inventory out to the locations it needs to. And at the same time, we can look at where our inventory is or where our sell through is and react very quickly.”

That is the part the legacy system could never do. “As our buyers can see real time what is selling, it allows them to write different transfers or move product more effectively throughout and get it back into stores if we’re sold out of it or if we’re running low on it. In our previous system, we wouldn’t have that luxury. We would have to wait till the next day to be able to see what our inventory amounts were, which always caused a backlog and a delay.”

Volume

“On the grounds, for instance, we will do over 10,000 transactions in a day, and that’s just your point of sale transaction,” Nicole says. “When you think about, on top of that, Teamwork is also supporting us on the back end in CHQ, on putting together the buyer transfers and the PO creations and so forth. So the amount of transactions that are happening are hundreds of thousands every single day during a peak time where we have our 26 stores open, our e-comm site going, and also we’re participating in an event.”

Staff who are ready in an hour

Seasonal events mean seasonal staff, and seasonal staff mean training time nobody has.

“In the past with our legacy system, we would have to bring people in a couple days ahead because it was so intricate to teach them how to use the system,” Nicole says. “With Teamwork, I will tell you, within the first hour they were teaching us how to use the system.”

“It doesn’t matter if you’re 16 and it’s your first job or you’re 65 semi-retired. The system is such an easy system and it’s adaptable to the user. It’s a touch system and it’s very intuitive. If you get stuck as the employee, it’s almost like the system’s got your back and goes, here’s your next step.”

Nicole frames it from the associate’s side of the counter. “Put yourself in the shoes of a 16 year old. You’re a little bit nervous and you’re standing in front of a stranger that wants to purchase from you. You need to have a system that is adaptable and that can move with you and be really easy. So when you’re nervous, that system almost does the hard work for you, which is what Teamwork does.”

The early business impact has shown up in the team itself. “I think we’ve seen the biggest business impact as of right now in our staff retention. They absolutely love the system. It’s easy for them to use. It allows them to almost be heroes to their customers, because now they have everything at their fingertips that a customer would potentially want to know about.”

What carries on after the gates close

The Stampede is the stress test. The rest of the year is where the platform compounds.

Customer profiles. “One of the features with Teamwork that we absolutely love is the customer profile setting. So you can build a full customer profile in there including their purchase history, not only what they purchased in brick and mortar, but online as well, and their return history. You can capture their size and everything about them, which in a retail space really allows you to build customer engagement and interact with your customer on a whole different lens.”

On the floor, that turns into sales. “When customer A walks into one store, our staff can quickly look them up. They can see the data points, the data history. They can see their past history, which allows them to also recommend an upsell product, which adds volume to your top line sales.”

Real-time availability. “This is an absolute game changer in the retail space. When a customer’s coming in and they want something and maybe we’re sold out in that one store, the staff can quickly go into the system and see where it is available, whether it’s online, whether it’s another store. And then it actually allows our staff to help the customer do an order in the moment through the e-commerce site, because it’s all locked together with an omnichannel.”

Ship from store. “You’re no longer just using one location as the location that has all the inventory that you can potentially pull from. You now have an entire company wide inventory that you can pull from, which exponentially will increase your overall top line sales.”

Returns across any channel. “When a customer purchases something and let’s say they forget the receipt, because that happens in retail, our staff can easily look up in their profile and see what they’ve purchased and easily do that return. If a customer buys something online and it’s shipped to them and now they’ve walked back into a brick and mortar store, we can look it up on their customer profile. Their customer profile really has everything we need to help them navigate their experience, regardless if it started in a brick and mortar store, or if it started online, or if it ended at the grounds.”

Integrations built for the Canadian market. “We’ve had no issues with Teamwork up here in Canada with compatibility in terms of our other partners. We have payment processing that was easily integrated with. We also had a people software that was easily integrated with. And then on top of that is your regular business. So you have your warehouse management system along with your accounting system that was all easy to integrate with.”

One of those integrations produced a benefit Lammle’s did not plan for. “We were able to push our employee profiles directly into the system, which meant as soon as HR hired that individual and they filled out their credentials online, it would be immediately picked up by the Teamwork system, allowing for a quicker start time for those employees.”

Reporting that drives the buy. “There’s some really great canned reporting that comes through from Teamwork, which allows us to see what our department sales are, our category sales are, which allows us to react to the business quicker. That could be anywhere from our year over year sell through, our top line sales, to how many units we have in stock, which will allow the buyers to then go through and reorder if they need to or adjust what their plan is for the product.”

Partner, not vendor

Ask Nicole to characterize the relationship and the answer is immediate.

“Teamwork is absolutely a partner for us and not just a vendor. When you think of being in the retail space and you are on the front lines, every moment matters. And so if something isn’t working in the system properly and you need help or you need support, being able to go to your partner and having them assist you in the moment can make or break your day, in essence.”

“We can get ahold of Teamwork via email, text message, phone calls, and they’re always willing to help anytime. That is the difference between having a successful day and a not so successful day.”

That mattered most during migration, when Lammle’s was making decisions outside its own expertise. “We work in the retail space. We don’t work in the system space. And so we heavily relied on them to be our partners to guide us through some of the solves that we needed to make. And they were there for us on that.”

Having a dedicated service team, rather than a rotating cast, changed the working relationship. “You really start to build a relationship and a bond and a great camaraderie with that team. Even though they’re not based in the same city or they’re not based in your office, they are like your colleagues. When I think of our team and the team at Teamwork, they come together and they just pick up the ball and they run with it. There’s a fluidity of exchange of information between the two, because they get so comfortable with each other and they don’t need to take that time to constantly be learning somebody new. So it actually speeds up what’s happening and it makes things really efficient for our business.”

Advice for retailers still on a legacy system

Nicole is candid about the myth she would most like to retire.

“What is one myth I want to debunk for other retail leaders? Probably that you won’t lose all your hair through this. It will take a lot longer than you initially plan. You will need a lot more people around the table to advise or be thought partners to. But I think any retailer can get through it. So if there is a retailer out there that is a little bit nervous or scared to make that leap because you don’t know what you don’t know, it’s definitely worth it with the right partner.”

Would she recommend Teamwork to a retailer coming off a legacy platform? “Absolutely. The team at Teamwork is top-notch. I’ve worked with a lot of other systems teams and by far Teamwork has been the most available to us, the most knowledgeable, and they’ve really had a great synergy with our Lammle’s team.”

The one thing she would do differently is take less time getting there. “The longer you try to build it and make it perfect, the longer it takes to actually turn it off. And we’re in a day and age where systems and technology are evolving so quickly, it almost leaves you a little bit behind.”

What’s next

“Now that we’re live and we’re almost through the first year, it’s really exciting to see what we’re going to be able to do,” Nicole says. Mobile handhelds are high on her list. “There is such a great engagement with your customer when you no longer have an object standing between the two of you. Now you have your POS in your back pocket. I can spend time engaging with the customer until it’s point of sale, and then it’s coming right out of my back pocket and we’re completing the transaction right there. So it’s fluid. It’s all in one motion. There’s no disjointment of, I’m going to sell to you and then you’re going to go somewhere else to pay for it, which really helps build customer retention.”

And on the pace of change in retail technology generally, she is clear about what she wants beside her.

“Technology in the retail space is changing so fast. We are so lucky to have a partner in Teamwork that will help us navigate that.”

Lammle’s Western Wear is Canada’s largest western retailer, operating 26 stores across Western Canada and the Prairies, a worldwide e-commerce business, and pop-up retail at rodeos, music festivals and events including the Calgary Stampede.