Morleys Stores Group is an independently owned chain of department stores based in London. The company operates eight stores in total, seven in Greater London and one in Berkshire – its flagship store, the historic Elys, Wimbledon, the Morleys of Brixton, Tooting and Bexleyheath, Selby’s in Holloway, Pearsons Enfield, Roomes Fashion & Home in Upminster and Camp Hopson in Newbury.
All stores offer a complete retail experience under one roof, specialising in high quality beauty products, ladies’ fashion, menswear, children’s toys and clothing, furniture, home and cookware. The group employs more than 750 staff.
For the past 15 years, the company has worked with AURES partner Futura Retail Solutions as its POS supplier. Over the course of that time, Futura has helped Morleys overhaul its retail operations with a modern, fully integrated POS and retail management system. As well as implementing end-to-end software solutions covering POS, CRM, inventory and customer loyalty scheme, Futura has installed more than 250 AURES tills across the eight stores.
Expanding capabilities
“We first started working with Morleys in 2008 when we rolled out new tills to the Elys, Wimbledon store,” said Tina Royall, Marketing Director at Futura. “This is also where their head office is located and we put Futura software into their HO systems for buying, stock management, reporting, etc.”
Tina explained that the main objective of that initial project was to move Elys from a financial stock to unit stock management system. “At this point they used financial stock management rather than knowing exactly what items had been sold and what they had available. So, we worked with them to get all their items captured on the system, introducing barcodes on all goods, and gradually moved them to a whole new method of purchasing and handling their stock.”
This transition opened the door for the company to undertake more detailed sales analysis and improve understanding of sales patterns, helping to increase sales and improve margins while reducing stock levels.
Over time, the same solutions were rolled out beyond the Elys store to the rest of the groups’ department stores. More recently, Futura has worked with Morleys on other developments such as introducing a customer loyalty scheme and integrating its in-store POS with its Shopify digital store.
Number one pick for hardware reliability
Another major project Futura undertook in 2021 was to standardise all the POS terminals across the eight stores. Futura had first introduced AURES hardware back in 2008 when it installed 54 Odysse tills as part of the Elys store project. Over the intervening years, a number of YUNO tills were installed at other stores. But many sales points were still running even older till hardware.
Dave Abbott joined Morleys as Head of IT in 2020. The move to align all POS hardware across the whole estate was one of the first big projects he was involved in.
“We already had AURES YUNOs in three stores, so they were a natural choice,” said Dave. “After implementation, we had 250 YUNOs across the eight stores.”
Dave says the biggest benefit he has seen is the drastic reduction in support tickets since the YUNOs were rolled out. “We’re probably down to less than 10 support tickets being issued per week now,” he said. “For 250 tills being run across eight stores, that’s pretty amazing. I think we’ve had one unit that actually needed to be repaired in three years.
“From a cost-quality perspective, the AURES terminals represent great value compared to other POS hardware I’ve worked with in the past. Another benefit is that they are a clean design and compact, they look great in the store, and they allow for more efficient cable management and more efficient use of space.”
Tina explained that reliability is one of the main reasons Futura always recommends AURES equipment to clients as their number one POS hardware pick. “Since we switched to AURES as our key partner, the amount of hardware issues we deal with has dropped dramatically,” she said. “Their systems are extremely robust and reliable and therefore perfect for retail, as well as being aesthetically pleasing.
“The price point is very reasonable and the three-year warranty is exceptionally good value. Again, great for a sector that can’t wait for repairs.”
Speed, quality and consistency
Dave added that exceptional reliability and speed of service were also major plus points in Morleys’ relationship with Futura. “They recently carried out our first full system upgrade in several years,” he said. “The process was practically seamless. We had 12 go-live issues, all resolved in an average of 30 minutes.
“Futura is a great fit for the size of our business and for our ambitions moving forward. They are very diligent in development and we benefit from consistency in the sense that it’s the same people picking up the phones and speaking with us. They know our systems well and that allows them to work at speed and with high quality.”