Shut down by Covid-19, RVC Increases Online Sales by 2000%

Real Vape Company (RVC) is a high-end vape shop in Kitchener, Waterloo and surrounding communities in Canada. They offer a large collection of e-liquid, vape kits, e-cigarettes, and more. If you’re looking for luxury vapes and e-juice crafted by professionals, look no further than the RVC. Learn more about how this business revolutionized online sales and dramatically increased their online presence with SalesVu’s online ordering solution.

David Steinbach has 2 brick and mortar locations and because of COVID-19 he was forced to close both stores to the public. He made some tough decisions and had to layoff 2 out of 8 employees. Business sales went down to 0 in both stores so he decided to adjust his business to meet the new reality by building his online presence, with the help of the SalesVu website builder platform, in order to be accessible for all customers.

‘Before COVID-19 we were selling about 10 orders per month (online). During the pandemic, we decided to implement the new website shopping page and in the first 5 days, we saw an increase of 2000% in online sales, we went from 10 orders per month to 40 orders per day, so we had a dramatic increase’ – David Steinbach

The Canadian government has allowed them to do curbside pick-up but customers are not allowed to interact with the staff. They can’t use the iPad POS app or the card reader to tap cards and pay for their items. The solution that they implemented and the new business flow is to place an order in advance from the website and then customers will transfer the money via Interac payments. When the customer is placing an order, they have two options to choose as their preferred delivery method, shipping or pick-up.

By selecting shipping, customers provide their address and a shipping fee is added to the order. This fee is previously set up in the back-end of SalesVu and it can be calculated by amount, weight, or by applying a simple flat-rate. If customers select pick-up, they are able to select their preferred pick-up date and time, according to the business operation hours.

‘We found this solution to be extremely effective and because of the advantage of having the shopping page with SalesVu, our dollar to dollar volume a month later only decreased 20% from what we were making when our stores were opened. We’ve been able to maintain 80% of our sales with the doors locked’ – David Steinbach.

David also shared with us that the online ordering system was quick to implement and that 90% of their customers find it very convenient and simple to use. After the stay at home order is lifted they plan to continue to use the shopping page on their website as the majority of their customers find online/mobile ordering to be a fast and convenient option, especially with multiple delivery options. This solution has been a game-changer for customers that live far from the store locations and who can place orders from different cities or states.

SalesVu reports have been essential for the RVC, they’ve helped to determine which products are selling the most, to track inventory of specific items, and to check the details of each individual order. David uses the weekly sales report that’s being sent to his email every Monday to compare sales by locations, categories, and products. He also uses the inventory management module on a daily basis to pull profitability reports which will tell him the total cost of inventory and the cost of goods sold. Lastly, he utilizes the view/adjust report to look at the items that are currently in stock and to set a threshold for low inventory email notifications. 

‘In the industry that we are in, we have looked at some competitors using Shopify and other POS software solutions… We are convinced SalesVu is the perfect solution for a retail business. It offers an awesome service with great quality. You don’t have to pay more to receive better features. SalesVu has it all and we are so happy we are able to manage two brick and mortar locations with this system’ – David Steinbach.

SalesVu’s advanced e-commerce platform is able to get your business up and running in just a couple of days. Get inspired by David’s success story during this pandemic and try out the website builder shopping page! To support a fellow business owner and get yourself (or a loved one) a treat, place your order from RVC here.