Okells Garden Centre

Discover how one reliable system has led to two successful sites for Okells garden centre.

Background

Okells garden centre is a family-run, independent garden centre that was established in 1982. Now led by second-generation owner George Okell, they aim to provide a special community for its customers, championing brilliant service and quality products.

Okells garden centre has evolved a lot since they opened. In recent years they have even expanded from a single site to two locations: The main, larger site with the traditional garden centre layout, retail space and large cafe near Tarporley, Cheshire, and the smaller, more distilled version just outside of Chester.

Challenge/Need

Okells had been running their garden centre for over 30 years when they looked to introduce new systems, as their business evolved they needed software that could better support their needs. Some of the key challenges they faced were:

  1. Due to the range of areas within the garden centre Okells were using multiple systems which created a disjointed workflow.
  2. Okells had been experiencing system “drop outs” during busy lunchtime services due to the rural location of the garden centre. 
  3. As a family-run business, Okells always knew they wanted the software they worked with in their garden centres to reflect those values.

Solution

Okells Garden Centre joined CSY in 2021, consolidating from several different systems across the cafe, gift shop and plant areas into one central system that could manage the entire garden centre. 

CSY’s Vector EPOS provided features that made running their garden centre easier, no matter the location. The cloud backup service protects data while the store-sync ensures data matches up between all locations, ensuring the same tools and information are available at every site. 

With CSY’s training available at regular intervals the transition has been seamless leaving the team confident in using the whole system.

Results

George was able to give us great insight into how CSY helped Okells Garden Centre, here is what he had to say:

  • “Bringing firstly the main site all onto one system benefitted us massively from basic things like reporting and making sure everything came out of one system – it becomes a lot more straightforward to obtain the numbers you’re looking for – but also some customer facing things, such as suddenly having gift cards that can be purchased and redeemed in any part of the business.”
  • “The training experience helped us get fully up to grips [with the system]. Our training journey has been quite continuous and we’ve done it at our own pace.” 
  • “I can’t know every plant. I can’t be in every place. But having a system like Vector really enables you to objectively see how the business is performing.”

The main outcome however is the opening of the second branch. George said that CSY had been instrumental in Okells decision to open the second site and helping them decide which areas of the garden centre to focus on, stating “it wouldn’t be possible to operate two sites today without the one system.” 

If you’re interested in finding out more about CSY and whether our EPOS system could help your garden centre expand, get in touch with a member of our team to find out more.