Three years ago when Shannon DiPadova was pregnant she and her husband Albert were visiting Shannon’s girlhood home in Santa Barbara. Unable to find maternity wear that did not make her look like she had just joined the circus, Shannon saw an opportunity to fill a need. Soon after that homecoming visit she opened her first Due Maternity store in Santa Barbara in April 2003. Less than three years later, Due Maternity has opened additional stores in San Francisco, Atlanta, and Austin.
Today, those four stores, and the Due Maternity e-commerce website are doing millions of dollars of business a year. Running on a fleet of sleek, fast, easy-to-use Macintosh computers, all connected wirelessly with AirPort Extreme, Due Maternity is changing the face of boutique retailing as we know it.
The Changing Shape of Maternity Wear
Located just blocks from the hospital where Shannon DiPadova gave birth to her first child, the San Francisco Due Maternity boutique is a warm, welcoming presence. In one corner, a new Mac Mini plays DVDs in the Entertainment Center. On a rug on the floor, kids and their dads can watch “Finding Nemo,” or browse educational websites while their moms shop. In the background, iTunes spins gigs of music, wirelessly streaming mood-setting beats to the show room floor from Mac OS X server via AirPort Extreme.
On the racks, Due Maternity features the fun, the fashionable and the functional. Due Maternity is dedicated to serving women who don’t want to be frumpy when they are pregnant. “You actually look better when you are wearing form fitting clothes,” Shannon DiPadova says. “You look like you are pregnant, not like you are huge.” Gold lamé diaper bags jostle for shelf space with t-shirts that proudly read, “Knocked Up.” When celebrities are photographed wearing shirts like these, the public isn’t far behind. “The tops are huge sellers,” Shannon notes.
Automation is the Answer
Shannon should know what’s selling and what isn’t. Behind the scenes at Due Maternity lies a state-of-the-art Point of Sale and Inventory Management system, running on a brand new iMac G5. The iMac on the checkout counter is connected via a wireless AirPort Extreme card to a Macintosh server running POS·IM from Ensign Systems.
Running POS·IM on the Mac lets me analyze the inventory. I can see what’s sold each month by each vendor. I can see who is selling best, and what’s selling best.
When a sale is made, a credit card reader automatically connects to Due Maternity’s credit card processor. While an electronic merchant service processes the transaction from the card swipe, POS·IM tracks the sale in Due Maternity’s inventory database.
“This is the best thing going for Point of Sale automation on the Mac,” co-founder Albert DiPadova raves. Using bar code tags, DiPadova scans the tags with a bar code reader, and POS·IM automates the process of entering the item into inventory. Item tracking is all field based, DiPadova explains. “Color, sizes, SKUs all go directly into our database. There’s no SKU building. It’s all automated.”
DiPadova can get up-to-the-second reports instantly. “I can look at sales by store, by item, by vendor, and find out what is selling and what I need to reorder. I can look at sales reports by day, right down to the SKU numbers. Running POS·IM on the Mac lets me analyze the inventory. I can see what’s sold each month by each vendor. I can see who is selling best, and what’s selling best — tops, bottoms, dresses.”
This is vital information for any retailer, especially those in the fashion industry. “We go to market four times a year, DiPadova notes, “so this information helps forecast our buying for the entire season.”
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