#refive

You’re running a successful chain of boutiques, but your “tech stack” looks like a digital junk drawer. Loyalty points live in one app that crashes every Tuesday. Coupons get managed in Excel (yes, still). Marketing campaigns run through Mailchimp, but good luck connecting that data to your actual sales. Your CRM? Half-empty and wholly ignored.

Sound familiar? You’re not alone, and you’re definitely not failing. You’re just operating with what most small and mid-sized retailers have: limited budgets, no IT department, and a retail tech stack built from whatever seemed cheapest at the time.

The truth is: while enterprise retailers throw thousands at Oracle and Salesforce, you’re stuck playing digital Jenga with subscription services that don’t talk to each other. Meanwhile, customers expect seamless experiences across every touchpoint. 

CRM and marketing teams face pressure from every direction. Personalisation isn’t a nice-to-have anymore; customers expect it. Privacy regulations keep tightening. Third-party cookies are disappearing. And acquisition budgets are being scrutinised like never before.

Yet the tools available often create more problems than they solve. Traditional sign-up forms ask for too much too soon. Research shows 27% of users abandon forms simply because they’re too long. In retail, this plays out daily: cashiers asking for emails, staff pushing loyalty cards, customers declining because they just want to pay and leave.

The result is a fractured view of your customers. Online, you might have rich behavioural data. In-store, you have transaction records with no identity attached. Your CRM contains email addresses from years ago. Loyalty members interact with one system while anonymous shoppers interact with nothing. These silos don’t just create reporting headaches; they make genuine personalisation nearly impossible.