Bon Lieu and Petit Pied rely on Vigilant not only for inventory control but for marketing and security as well

by Andy Shaw

If only his shoes were the right size, Jean Dumas would dance a jig in them. He is that delighted over the many ways that Vigilant has benefited his two retail stores on Toronto's famed Yonge Street. Yet despite his stock of 18 different shoe sizes in virtually all colors of the rainbow, none would fit Dumas. Both stores exclusively carry children's shoes.

Dumas, a Quebec City native and veteran of retail merchandising, left the corporate world of Sears and Bata Shoes in 1992. He chose, instead, to join his wife as owner-operators of Bon Lieu, a store specializing in up-market children's wear. It was not long before they opened Petit Pied next door, which specialized in quality shoes. Soon, with the expansion of these stores, they realized they were in desperate need of automating their sales, accounting and inventory control.

"When you stock so many sizes and colors of shoes as we do, you need to track very carefully what is selling and what is not. And that is very, very time consuming when you do it manually," Dumas explains. "But if you don't do it, you can end up with a lot of dead stock on your hands or in bankruptcy." It was this that prompted Dumas to search for an inventory control system, one that would provide him with the optimum control he was in need of. He finally discovered Vigilant after putting an expensive system to the test.

"We met with several companies but when we met with Vigilant we realized right away that its package was fully integrated," recalls Jean. "That meant that the posting was live on each transaction. We could have an up-to-date balance sheet and reports if we wanted them after every entry."

He also asserts that the Vigilant Size and Color Add-on simplifies his inventory control and re-stocking immensely. "First of all, you don't need to have so many item numbers as you do in a manual system. One number identifies a particular style and then when you key in that number, a grid appears with the choices of size and colors you have in that style. And then you put the size and color in you want. The system does the rest."

Automatically, Vigilant prices store sales, updates the inventory, posts the price and the product purchased to the customer's record. These transactions are key to Dumas' business, as by building up a data bank of customer purchases and preferences, he can conduct direct mail sales campaigns with pinpoint accuracy. As a result, his profits have greatly increased. Business at Bon Lieu has improved thanks to Vigilant's layaway feature as well. It makes it easy for parents to order school uniforms for their children well in advance of the school year.

Vigilant simplifies the process of determining the successes of his business from day-to-day. He can not only track inventory levels, but through Vigilant's daily reporting and till control features Dumas can monitor the profitability of each store securely and confidentially. Vigilant
allows him to control who has access to what functions of the software.

For Jean Dumas, Vigilant has turned dreams of growth into an affordable reality, with its dynamic combination of cost-efficiency, reliability, adaptability and attentive support. "Vigilant seems to have grown with us," he says. Presently operating three stores along with a staff of seventeen, he plans to add a new wholesale business to his growing small-sizes empire. For his new venture into the wholesale sector, Vigilant Sales Order product would certainly be his first choice as well.

Yet for his two stores now, along with any he wishes to add in the future, Multi-Site Polling can aid in his processes. "Vigilant's Multi-Site Polling gives me ultimate control of my growing company. It has allowed us to expand without adding significantly to our overhead," Dumas concludes. "For example, we're already doing in excess of a few million dollars and I have just one bookkeeper who comes in once a month to balance the books of our two companies. I think I can add another company and even two or three more stores without adding very much to his workload."

He insists that what first attracted him to Vigilant was the fact that it was and continues to be a "well-priced product." But even since Jean Dumas invested in Vigilant, it has time and time again delivered what he wishes it to and lives up to its claims of being ease-of-use and having little requirement for maintenance.