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Online and in-person. One system.

“A gift shop on Queen West in Toronto sold a hand-poured candle set online to a customer in Ottawa. When the owner went to pack it, the last one had been sold in-store two hours earlier. She had to call and offer a refund on a $65 order.”

Small retailers who sell both in-store and online constantly battle inventory sync issues. Most use separate systems (Shopify for web, Square for in-store) and reconcile manually at end of day. By then, oversells have already happened and customer trust is damaged.

“A small pet store in Oakville tried to sell a 25kg bag of premium dog food online for $89.99. Canada Post quoted $34 to ship it to Barrie. The owner ate the shipping cost twice, then just stopped listing heavy items online entirely.”

Canadian shipping costs are notoriously high, especially for heavy or oversized items going outside the GTA. Small retailers either overcharge on shipping and lose the sale, undercharge and destroy their margins, or just avoid e-commerce altogether. Calculating real rates across Canada Post, Purolator, and UPS for every product is a part-time job.

“A vintage clothing shop in Kensington Market accepted a return on a $120 leather jacket but the staff member forgot to log it. At month-end, the books were $120 off, and the owner spent an entire evening cross-referencing bank statements with till receipts.”

Returns and exchanges are one of the messiest parts of small retail. Without a proper system, refunds get processed but inventory doesn't get updated, exchange credits disappear, and the financial reconciliation at month-end becomes a detective exercise. This gets worse during post-holiday return season in January.

“A hobby and craft store in Mississauga manages 8,000+ SKUs in a Google Sheet. The owner's daughter accidentally deleted three rows of bead inventory data while sorting by price. They didn't notice until a wholesale reorder came in wrong two weeks later.”

Small specialty retailers often carry enormous product catalogs with variants (sizes, colours, materials) and manage them in spreadsheets that were never designed for inventory. One bad sort, one accidental overwrite, and critical product data vanishes. There's no version history, no audit trail, and no connection to what's actually on the shelf.

“A florist in Etobicoke ordered 200 poinsettias for Christmas 2025 based on a hunch. She sold 140 and composted 60 at a total loss of $480. The year before, she had ordered too few and turned away customers the week before Christmas.”

Seasonal inventory planning in small retail is almost always based on the owner's memory and gut feeling. Without historical sales data broken down by week, category, and trend, you either overstock and eat spoilage, or understock and lose revenue during your highest-margin weeks.

“A home goods retailer in Etobicoke processes 40 online orders a day from a small warehouse. Pick lists are printed on paper, packers guess which box size to use, and shipping labels are generated one at a time. Last week they shipped a $200 ceramic vase in a box with no padding because the packer was rushing.”

Small retailers without warehouse management systems run fulfillment like a relay race with no baton. There's no pick path optimization, no pack station workflow, no volumetric logic for box selection, and no batch label printing. Every order is a manual scramble, and as volume grows, mistakes multiply.