Walk into Economy Candy on Manhattan's Lower East Side and you'll find what you'd expect from a multi-generation sweets store: floor-to-ceiling shelves chock-full of sugary treats, vintage candy bars stacked next to bulk gummies, and family owner-operators behind the counter.
What you probably wouldn't expect is the sophisticated omnichannel infrastructure running behind the scenes.
Economy Candy is like many other small businesses, with a product catalog that changes seasonally, hundreds of SKUs, a lean team, and online + in-person sales. Yet, they’ve created a smooth, reliable customer experience many large retailers haven’t achieved.
To get there, married co-owners Mitchell Cohen and Skye Greenfield Cohen chose a point-of-sale (POS) and ecommerce system that connect and sync in real time.
The omnichannel problem many retailers struggle with
The gap between shoppers’ omnichannel expectations and what most brands actually deliver is often more like a canyon. Only 9% of shoppers are satisfied with in-store shopping, and that number is only 14% for ecommerce. Additional research showed that 60% of consumers said they'd trust a brand more if it felt consistent across channels.
The root cause is usually tools that don’t integrate across channels. Often, POS systems offer visibility into in-store sales, and ecommerce platforms only surface what’s sold online. That means inventory counts drift, order statuses lag, and staff spend hours reconciling data.
“For years, we were aware that the disconnect in inventory between our website and store shelves was an issue,” said Skye Greenfield Cohen, Co-Owner at Economy Candy. “We’d sell out of an item in store and it would still be available for order online, leading to disappointed customers and customer service headaches.”
For independent retailers operating with lean teams and thin margins, that disconnect is especially expensive — not just in software costs, but also in time and customer trust.
How Economy Candy bridged the omnichannel gap
Economy Candy connected WooCommerce and Square so that every transaction — online or in-store — flows into a single view. Website orders sync to Square's POS, sales at the register sync back to WooCommerce, and vice versa, all automatically.
That two-way sync is the seamless foundation that makes everything else possible. They can view real-time inventory levels at any time. When a customer places a buys online and picks up in-store (BOPIS) (about 5% of their orders, according to Skye), the team sees it right away. When someone buys the last box of a seasonal item at the counter, the website reflects it before someone online tries to add it to their cart. And when Skye pulls up a customer record, she sees everything — whether it’s orders at the till or online orders placed at 2 am — in one place.
This real-time sync is particularly helpful during their busiest times of year (Halloween and winter holidays). Online orders quadruple, customers line up down the block to get into the shop, and they can’t always keep shelves as fully stocked as they might like.
“Being able to look up our inventory in real time and let a customer know ‘hey, we actually do have that on hand. Let me get it from the back for you’ has saved a lot of sales,” Skye said.
The right POS trumps big budgets
Although Economy Candy runs into some common challenges for indie retailers, they closed the omnichannel gap and ensured a smooth customer experience by choosing systems built to work together.
That distinction matters because the opportunity is growing faster than most retailers are adapting to it. US click-and-collect sales are projected to exceed $154 billion, now accounting for more than 10% of all ecommerce, and that market is forecast to grow more than 16% annually through 2033. The retailers capturing that growth won't necessarily be the ones with the biggest budgets. They'll be the ones whose POS and ecommerce systems connect and update automatically — and whose customers consistently have smooth transactions, whether they're standing at the counter or shopping from their couch.
“If you are a business who has been in operation for years and years without a connected POS and online store, I get it. The idea of unifying those two operations can seem impossible,” said Skye. “For Economy Candy, it has allowed us to expand our footprint to a second location, increase the amount of items we’re able to stock, and improve our margins.”
Check out the full Economy Candy story, including details on their customized setup with WooCommerce and Square.