Urban Barn Upgrades Its Infrastructure To Support 100% Growth

By Bob Johns

August 2013 Integrated Solutions For Retailers

This Canadian retailer needed a new data-storage infrastructure to support its rapid growth and relieve the strain on its IT team.

Canadian home furnishing and accessory retailer Urban Barn nearly doubled in size from 21 to 41 stores in less than five years. Although this growth is phenomenal, it presents certain challenges. Urban Barn’s IT manager, Jordy Nipius, and director of IT, Rob Larmour, quickly realized the existing IT infrastructure technology was not nearly flexible or scalable enough for this growth. “We got to a point where the technologies in place were creating bottlenecks in the business and inhibiting growth,” Larmour says. “We needed better data storage and access to that data to make the right business decisions.”

For several months, Nipius led the search for a solutions provider. “We wanted to be very selective,” he says. “After all, data storage touches every aspect of the business, all the way from our core ERP (enterprise resource planning) solution, to solutions at the point of sale, to the finance department, purchasing, and warehousing.”