The Guide to Endless Aisles

As consumers, we know the frustration of going to a retail store looking for a specific item, only to find out that it’s not available. Maybe you shop at a discount grocery store for your produce but source local chicken at your neighborhood butcher. You'll likely go to a competitor if their supply is inconsistent and unreliable. From big box stores to more niche specialty shops, not being able to buy desired items can change our purchasing habits and ultimately, our loyalty to brands/retailers.  

This applies to online shopping wherein a limited selection of items — or, even worse, items being constantly out of stock can be inconvenient and drive us to other online retailers.

“Upon visiting a store and finding a product they want is out of stock, 17% of U.S. online adults say they would use their mobile devices to make an immediate purchase at a competitor’s website; 37% say they will buy that item from an online retailer when they get home, and 35% say they will just go to a different store to buy it.” - Forrester Research

As retailers, losing your customer base can be mitigated by offering a unified shopping experience online and in-store. An omnichannel approach to retail has quickly become integral to remaining in today’s competitive climate, especially as larger retailers have openly embraced omnichannel experiences.

To keep up with the experiences these larger stores have started to present to their customers, an endless aisle model for your customers can help them find what they need through your e-commerce pages or brick-and-mortar locations.

What is an Endless Aisle? 

Endless aisles are built to let you display more in stock, extending the range of products your organization can offer to its customers. It hinges on understanding your inventory and displaying items that can be shipped to your customers via special orders or direct delivery from your suppliers. Essentially, you are offering products that you might not have in inventory, but that you can facilitate getting to your customers.

Large retailers have taken notice of the vast potential endless aisles present, using them to expand offerings beyond what they could normally carry in stores. Walmart Canada, for example, added 175 new third-party grocery sellers through their Walmart Canada grocery options back in 2021. This has allowed them to offer more niche options to their customers — and they’ve achieved major growth since implementation; grocery orders from their marketplace grew 6x from 2020, with increased average order sizes.

Embracing an endless aisle model lets you offer more without bloating your inventory stocks while capturing customers looking for something just right for them. This is normally done through in-store kiosks, or more commonly, a web store.

In-Store Kiosks

A kiosk is used to display your organization’s entire catalog, which includes everything from products that might be in inventory but not on shelves, to products offered by your suppliers that you can put on special order. It relies on customer independence and self-discovery — much like a customer would have if they searched for their products online.

An example of how kiosks work for customers can be seen in the video from Walmart below.

The effectiveness of in-store kiosks comes from customers ordering items that Walmart might not necessarily have on hand. Due to their logistics ability, they’re able to get any specialty product their wide range of suppliers might have within 48 hours for pickup. This combination mixes their online shopping experience with their in-store experience to create a unified whole for their customers. 

Online endless aisles with dropshipping

Dropshipping is the most well-known approach to an endless aisle model and the easiest to set up. It allows you to present all of your products online, including products you can put up for special order — all on your retail web store. Not only are you offering your products for sale, but you can also offer everything your suppliers and distributors have available, magnifying the chances your customers find what they’re looking for from you. 

With an online endless aisle model, your customers have everything they need at their fingertips. They can choose whether to pick up directly from your store or have purchases shipped directly to their door from your suppliers (under your branding).

The Benefits of Endless Aisles for Retailers

There are three key benefits that you’ll find as a retailer after the adoption of an endless aisle to your sales strategy. 

1. Higher sales volumes: By offering more products, you increase the likelihood of customers buying directly from you instead of tabbing off your page or walking to another store. Having a broader range of items to choose from gives your customers less of an excuse to walk out — and offering sizes, colors, and variations can ensure that niche customers are always happy with your selection
2. Customer retention: Provide a better shopping experience, and retain more customers. If you have what your customers want, they’re more likely to remain loyal to your brand. With 50% of shoppers willing to go to your competitor if they can’t find the product, endless aisles can keep them coming back. 
3. Data collection: With an endless aisle attached to your eCommerce website (or via in-store kiosks), you can see what your customers are demanding that you might not necessarily keep in-store. If you’re a sporting goods retailer and notice that a lot of people have been ordering a specific type or size of jacket that you don’t have in stock — there’s a good chance you’ll want to bring it into your store. 

Customer preferences have changed — and your organization needs to keep up with them. Consumers today expect a wide range of products and brands to choose from — and the ability to find niche products at the tip of their fingers. An endless aisle model allows retailers to meet these expectations. Letting customers find exactly what they need from you is a fantastic way to solidify your presence in the marketplace. 

The Challenge of Endless Aisles

To implement endless aisles, businesses need seamless integrations between in-store systems, online inventory, and supplier inventory. By far the biggest challenge retailers face with endless aisles is the communication between them and their suppliers. 

By adding endless aisles to your store, you’re adding another layer of logistical complexity. With them, companies have to start sending orders outside of a traditional schedule to meet consumer demand. This can quickly overwhelm any organization as inventory levels need to be tracked far more regularly, and order management processes need to be overhauled from the ground up to be more agile. 

To make matters more complicated, endless aisles require a wide range of suppliers to get the most value. Adding new purchasing channels can be difficult for retail organizations, especially for piecemeal orders due to the increase in backend complexity. 

Traditional methods of order management and inventory keeping don’t work to make an effective endless aisle, as the labor required is too great. To simplify these issues, organizations must turn to order automation and connections between their POS systems and their suppliers.

An integrated POS can connect with order and inventory management systems — allowing your customers to order directly from your suppliers through you, and let you have accurate inventory counts. This simplifies the amount of work implementing an endless aisle system can be for your company, and provides better customer experiences. 

A practical example of issues endless aisles can cause

Let’s say you own a mid-sized electronics store and decide to implement an endless aisle to compete with some of the larger retailers. You decide to let your team handle this manually. Quickly you become overwhelmed for three reasons:

2. When a customer orders a product that isn’t in your store but is available through your supplier, you have to manually enter the order for them and wait for confirmation. If your supplier isn’t responsive, there’s a risk of delay or missing the order. Even when they do confirm, you risk delaying or missing the window for delivery entirely. This leads to unhappy customers waiting long periods for their specialty orders.

3. The manual reconciliation process of your orders, payments, and inventory levels now includes matching every online order with supplier invoices and updating your inventory system. This is a tedious process and requires meticulous attention to detail — all while hoping that no serious user errors are made. 

To avoid these situations, companies with successful endless aisle models integrate their POS systems with their suppliers, ERPs, and inventory management systems to automate the vast majority of work required for a true omnichannel approach.

Simplifying endless aisles with OrderEase

Keeping your inventory, active sales, supplier inventories, and in-store systems doesn’t have to be a lot of work. Integrations and automation can save the day and make setting up your endless aisle easy. 

By integrating your POS system with your vendors, you can place orders directly using one system, eliminating the need to swivel between multiple portals to order.

OrderEase connects your POS to your inventory management systems, ensuring an accurate inventory count (barring spoilage/damage/theft) you can present directly to your customers.

With OrderEase, your customers’ endless aisle orders are automated, providing vendors with specific packing and shipping instructions without the need for manual intervention to ensure that each one runs smoothly.

Endless aisles can be for you

Adopting the endless aisle model can significantly enhance your retail operations by expanding your product offerings without overburdening your inventory. Seamlessly integrating online and in-store experiences can help you meet customer demands more effectively, reduce your chances of losing sales to competitors, and gather data for more effective business decisions.