Kol Kid
Q’s & A’s with Lisa from Kol Kid
Introduce yourself
Lisa: My name is Lisa Miyasaki. I am the owner of Kol Kid, and we have been on Queen Street West since 1999.
How did it all start for Kol Kid?
Lisa: Well, the store was inspired by my son, Kol. His name is in the store title and really it’s an homage to him and his life. He was born with extraordinary special needs and he, as a very young child, really hated electronic noises. He really informed a lot of my buying decisions and I try to find things that are whimsical and open ended and represent his life as best as I could.
What do you see in people’s faces when they come into the store?
Lisa: People really want to come into a store and be excited. I mean, that’s what shopping should be. We try to give people the atmosphere and the experience where they revisit their childhood.
What does an average day look like at Kol Kid?
Lisa: I have people come into the store first thing in the morning and we’re busy doing orders, fulfilling orders, and then we open the doors probably an hour later. And then after that it’s just like people coming into the store, just a regular retail environment and we’re still fulfilling and packing orders as they come in. We do try to ship out the same day.
From my first meeting with Trexity, I realized immediately that it was going to be the Uber of delivery services and that’s what it’s become. It’s great.
Why did you decide to start working with Trexity?
Lisa: I tried a lot of different platforms. I mean, most Canadian stores will try Canada Post and we did that for a good six months, and that was challenging because Canada Post couldn’t handle the volume. I then tried another courier service, but they just didn’t have the integration that I needed, and they didn’t have the processes in place to make sure that the packages they picked up were going to the correct locations and that I was also being billed properly. There were all these kinds of issues along the way, which is why I decided to look for another platform.
Tell me a little bit more about the partnership with Trexity?
Lisa: Trexity guides you all the way. If you have issues, someone’s always there to help. You’re never on the phone for five or 10 minutes waiting. You know that issues are going to be handled and that you can reach somebody when you need them.
How has Trexity helped with your day-to-day operations?
Lisa: I think it’s important to be able to offer customers a sense of reliability. They want to know that if they’re going to order something from us, that they’re going to get it on time. You can place orders with larger companies, but you may not get it for a week or two, but if you place it with us, with Trexity, we get it out the same day.
Tell me about your experience with the Trexity Platform.
Lisa: What I’ve noticed about Trexity is that it’s not just like they’ve built the platform, they’re done and they walk away. I’ve definitely seen improvements. They’re always thinking of ways to make things better. I think Trexity has recently introduced flat rate shipping and that’s going to have a much better impact on our use of Trexity because if I don’t have to constantly think about, oh, it’s this distance and how much is it going to be? I know it’s just going to be this set cost now, it’s much easier.
Favorite features?
Lisa: I think it’s just user friendliness, I like to look at the timeline. When we send a batch of shipments out and I want to check on it, you can actually see the progress it’s making. From my first meeting with Trexity, I realized immediately that it was going to be the Uber of delivery services and that’s what it’s become. It’s great.
Did you start to explore home delivery during the pandemic?
Lisa: The early bits of COVID were crazy and it was like me on a bike just dropping things off in a block or two because I was like, what else am I going to do? I think the breaking point really was we had a mass of shipments, probably 50 shipments going out to Canada Post. They were so overwhelmed that they were just being warehoused in another location, but they weren’t being scanned and I didn’t know if they were lost and nobody could tell me anything. I just thought, I just can’t do it this way anymore. That’s when we just decided to make a change.
Do you have any delivery tips for your fellow merchants that may be thinking about offering home delivery?
Lisa: I think you want accountability, number one. You want to be able to align yourselves with the delivery company that’s going to take care of the packages, get it from A to B safely. I think that was the difficult thing for me when I was trying this out was some of the delivery services I used. I think the barcode scanning that Trexity has eliminated all of those errors for us.
Visit Kol Kid: https://kolkid.ca/
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Local Community Matters to Trexity – When people do what they love, they do it better.