Nutrition Warehouse is Australia’s leading sports nutrition retailer, with over 120 stores across Australia/New Zealand. Renowned for delivering an exceptional customer experience, the brand is dedicated to helping customers achieve their health and fitness goals through expert advice and high-quality products.

To enhance operations and elevate the customer experience, Nutrition Warehouse partnered with Make Retail to migrate from a legacy POS system to Shopify POS. Make Retail guided the business through a seamless transition, enabling faster, more efficient operations, consistent customer experiences and a scalable platform ready for future initiatives.

Legacy System Challenges

Before partnering with Make Retail, Nutrition Warehouse’s legacy POS system was limiting staff efficiency and impacting the customer experience. The system’s slow performance, lack of flexibility and poor integrations caused frequent operational disruptions, such as:

  • Searching customer records could take several minutes, prolonging sales interactions.

  • Online gift cards could not be redeemed in-store and stock synchronisation was inconsistent.

  • Staff could manually override prices, leading to inconsistent discounting between stores.

With multiple disconnected systems and processes, Nutrition Warehouse lacked a unified view of customers and store operations, reducing efficiency and making it difficult to deliver a consistent, high-quality experience across locations.

Partnership with Make Retail

Chief Operations Officer, Duncan McHugh, chose Make Retail as a trusted partner for the Shopify POS migration due to their extensive experience with large-scale retail implementations across Australia. Their track record with complex migrations provided confidence in a smooth rollout and robust technical support.

Make Retail’s practical expertise proved invaluable, offering guidance on Shopify POS functionality, tips for optimisation and hands-on support throughout the process. Their assistance with training video development and on-site installations across Melbourne streamlined the onboarding process for staff and ensured minimal disruption during the rapid rollout of stores.

Duncan McHugh, Chief Operations Officer, Nutrition Warehouse

“The new system empowers staff to spend more time engaging with customers and less time managing manual processes, establishing a strong foundation for operational excellence and continued innovation”.

The Solution

Together, Nutrition Warehouse and Make Retail implemented Shopify POS as a centralised platform, unifying in-store and online operations. The decision to partner with Make Retail was reinforced by their deep understanding of Shopify’s retail ecosystem and their ability to deliver a seamless, low-risk migration.

What Nutrition Warehouse found most valuable was Make Retail’s hands-on approach, from detailed training resources to on-the-ground installations across the store network, ensuring staff felt supported and confident from day one.

The solution delivered:

  • Faster, mobile-first operations: Staff can serve customers anywhere on the floor using iPads and mobile POS devices.

  • Consistent pricing and discounting: Integrated rules ensure a uniform experience across all locations & online.

  • Comprehensive reporting: Centralised insights enable smarter decision-making and improved efficiency.

  • Future-ready foundation: A scalable platform designed to support continued growth and innovation.

Operational Improvements & Staff Experience

Since implementing Shopify POS, Nutrition Warehouse has seen measurable improvements across operations and staff engagement:

Faster transactions

Improved system performance has significantly reduced customer wait times at checkout.

Enhanced staff experience

Team members can now focus more on engaging with customers rather than managing system workarounds.

Greater consistency

Standardised pricing and discounting policies reinforce brand trust and improve customer satisfaction.

Simplified onboarding

Intuitive processes and accessible training materials enable new staff to become effective from day one.

Lessons Learned from the Migration

Reflecting on the large-scale POS transition, Duncan McHugh emphasised several key lessons:

  • Comprehensive upfront training is essential for a smooth rollout and to reduce reliance on old systems.

  • Product champions should be involved early to support teams, address initial challenges and maintain momentum.

  • Even with careful planning, unexpected issues can arise, such as customer data inconsistencies or interface quirks, highlighting the importance of flexibility and adaptability throughout the process.

The migration to Shopify POS has positioned Nutrition Warehouse for long-term success by:

  • Supporting omnichannel integration with ecommerce, delivery platforms and backend systems.

  • Simplifying expansion opportunities, including international growth into markets such as New Zealand.

  • Enabling new initiatives, such as loyalty program integration and other customer engagement tools.

If you’re considering upgrading your retail technology to improve staff efficiency and customer experience, Make Retail can help. 

Reach out at hello@makeretail.com.au or give us a call on 1300 844 599 to start the conversation.