Patchworks empowers Gym+Coffee to strengthen omnichannel operations

Ireland's largest athleisure brand, Gym+Coffee, has strengthened its omnichannel business operations and in turn supported its rapid business growth with the help of Patchworks and our close partner Excellent Zephyr

Proudly designed in Ireland, Gym+Coffee was created in 2017 by three friends on a mission to bring high-quality athletic clothing to a nation that was quickly seeing corner cafés and stunning natural landscapes as consumers' new social hubs.

Over the last five years, the brand has seen rapid business growth with its brick-and-mortar retail footprint developing to ten stores in Ireland and the UK, including Manchester and Belfast. It expanded its online presence from one overarching eCommerce store to four localised sites for the UK, EU, Australia and USA, with its headcount reaching over 200 and the business seeing a 15-fold increase in annual sales over the same period.

However, Gym+Coffee’s impressive growth has presented its own challenges, particularly surrounding the brand's tech stack, back-end processes and scalability. Understanding the need for support to continue providing the experience that its customers know and love, Gym+Coffee approached Excellent Zephyr to help with its pre-sales technology selection, as well as project management and technical development.

Standard functionality was implemented to optimise key business processes such as record to report, order to cash and procure to pay. This was then combined with the SuiteSuccess methodology to fast-track implementation time.

But Excellent Zephyr knew they needed help connecting Gym+Coffee’s existing tech stack, and build reliable integration points between their eCommerce, POS and 3PL. That’s why they brought Patchworks, and our industry-leading iPaaS, on board. This partnership and omnichannel approach not only streamlined operations, but elevated the entire customer experience.

Wesley Scourfield, Operation Director at Gym+Coffee said: “We’re extremely proud of the success the brand has achieved over the last few years, but most notably the last twelve months. Having secured additional funding earlier this year, it was time for us to take the brand to the next level.

“Understanding how our loyal community of customers like to shop, as well as how shopping behaviours are constantly changing in the current climate, we knew we needed to put the right technology in place to speed up processes and ultimately allow us to scale the brand to a larger customer base across a number of touchpoints.

“From day one to go-live, the support we have received with regards to project management has been of the highest quality. The technical knowledge of NetSuite and integration from the Excellent Zephyr team has been invaluable for the success of our project.”

Jim Herbert, CEO at Patchworks said: “Working as one team with Excellent Zephyr and Gym+Coffee, we’ve designed, built and tested reliable integration points to create a robust and future-proof ecommerce stack which will handle the highest peaks in retail. For the Patchworks team, sharing the vision is as critical as delivering the technology for a successful implementation, and we look forward to watching Gym+Coffee’s continued retail success.”

During the project, the need for additional technical development within NetSuite was identified to achieve further functionality, leading to a SuiteScript solution being developed to resolve a tax rounding issue on sales orders.

Gym+Coffee now has a robust integrated tech stack, with NetSuite at the heart of its end-to-end business processes, that can enable them to confidently scale business operations as the brand continues to establish itself.

Ian Moore, founder and head of services at Excellent Zephyr commented: “Gym+Coffee has seen impressive growth in recent years across a number of touchpoints. We’ve loved working together at such an exciting part of its journey - by really getting under the skin of the business, to understand its long-term and short-term goals, and combining this with our deep understanding of the challenges faced by retailers on a daily basis, we’ve enabled it to integrate a seamless end-to-end solution. Gym+Coffee now has a 360-degree view of its business, all in one place - vital for being able to effectively scale up operations as it continues to grow.

“Recent years have shown us that having the right technology in place is key for enabling businesses to swiftly adapt to ever-changing customer habits to keep their edge. This isn’t going to change any time soon. Over the coming years, technology will continue to be vital to cater for constantly shifting consumer habits, including the resurgence of in-store shopping and omnichannel retail. It’s been a pleasure working with Gym+Coffee to ensure it has the right tools in place to not only survive in but thrive in this climate.”

Earlier this year, it was announced that Gym+Coffee raised an extra €17 million in new funding in a round led by Castlegate Investments. The new cash will allow it to continue its UK expansion as well as grow in key markets such as Germany, which is the biggest athleisure market in Europe.

Its shareholders to date have included One Direction star Niall Horan, rugby legend Brian O’Driscoll and the Davy EIIS fund.