Matchbox: 300 orders stalled at Black Friday. Now web fulfilment runs 80% smoother.
300 orders. No way out but forward.
Matchbox has been an Australian kitchenware retailer since 1976. Family-run and Australian-owned, the business runs 18 stores across Victoria and into the WA and Queensland markets, sitting inside major shopping centres as a quality alternative to the big-box players. Online has become a fast-growing part of the business, with order volumes that Lauren Owers, Matchbox’s e-Commerce & Marketing Manager, describes as back to COVID-era highs.
Then a major Shopify upgrade, done about a month before Black Friday, broke the patchwork that had been holding the old setup together. Stock stopped reading by location. Shopify only saw the total quantity across every store, so it kept selling product the warehouse could not actually fulfil. Orders piled up fast. By Black Friday, the backlog had hit roughly 300 unfulfilled orders, with the very real risk of returning from a few days off at Christmas to a thousand.
The integration had to be fixed before Christmas. There was no second option.
“It’s far smoother now. We have very little issue.”— Lauren Owers, e-Commerce & Marketing Manager, Matchbox
The standard setup was hitting its ceiling
Matchbox had been keeping its Shopify site running on custom code and patchwork fixes. It worked, until the site upgrade wiped out the specialist code that had been quietly holding everything together.
“Unless you’re managing all those pieces of code, it gets lost. That’s why the integration piece is so important, because then you don’t have to worry about it.”— Lauren Owers, Matchbox
The core problem was inventory. With one pooled Shopify location, the site read the combined stock across all 18 stores and reported it as available, even when the units were scattered across the network or sitting in Perth.
“Say we had 100 water bottles spread across our stores in different amounts. The site couldn’t see each store’s stock — it just read the combined total and marked the item in stock. But the units might actually be in Perth or another store, and getting them to fulfil an order is an absolute nightmare.”— Lauren Owers, Matchbox
Overselling was the headline symptom, and click and collect was clunky and kept breaking. The stop-gap fixes had run their course.
“Patchworking ended up costing us more in the end. So we said, all right, let’s bite the bullet and go with SAAS Integrator.”— Lauren Owers, Matchbox
For six months, the fallout landed on Lauren personally, pulling her and the marketing team away from their actual jobs and into a daily fight with the systems.
“I’m not technical, so it was really painful. I had a dev team talking to the vendor, and we were just trying to put a square peg in a round hole. It wasn’t really fair on anyone.”— Lauren Owers, Matchbox
The switch
SAAS Integrator replaced the patchwork with a native Shopify integration, mapping each Matchbox store to its own Shopify location with real per-location stock, instead of one pooled location reading the total. Shopify locations became the source of truth, connected directly to Retail Express. It went live in January 2026.
“It let us leverage the Shopify locations as a source of truth connecting to Retail Express, instead of one location that just read the total.”— Lauren Owers, Matchbox
Because the integration runs on native Shopify, Matchbox stopped having to manage and re-manage custom code every time something changed upstream.
“SAAS Integrator works with native Shopify, so I don’t have to worry about what Retail Express is doing. You’re connecting those pieces for us.”— Lauren Owers, Matchbox
Accurate stock, by location
Per-location accuracy is the change Lauren points to first. With real stock levels behind each store, head office can trust what the system says, which sharpens buying, forecasting and marketing decisions and helps store teams keep their counts right.
“Inventory control is probably the main one that’s really helped. It’s put people on notice around accuracy, which has been really helpful.”— Lauren Owers, Matchbox
“I can read in-store stock through Shopify now, barely even going into Retail Express, because I read it all online and I know it’s correct.”— Lauren Owers, Matchbox
Click and collect that works
Click and collect was the non-negotiable. It had been running on custom code bolted around Shopify, and when the site upgrade wiped that code out, the whole experience broke. Rebuilt on native Shopify fulfilment and backed by real per-location stock, it now does what it always should have: customers see what is genuinely available at their store, choose it, and collect it without fighting the checkout.
“Click and collect had to work. We needed to be able to identify the quantity of product online, easily. That was a big one.”— Lauren Owers, Matchbox
A marketing team that stopped firefighting
With the integration handling what used to be manual, the marketing team shifted from maintaining the business to improving it. Instead of chasing integration faults, they are running omnichannel campaigns, adding native Shopify apps, and stitching products into single pages with multiple colours and variations — something the old setup could not do well.
“We don’t have to worry about locations anymore. We don’t have to worry about things breaking. It’s saved us time, but it’s also let us use more native Shopify apps to support our customers and our sales.”— Lauren Owers, Matchbox
Asked to put a number on the change in fulfilment and day-to-day web order management:
“I’d say it’s 80% better.”— Lauren Owers, Matchbox
A business case that pays for itself
For a marketing lead who has to justify the value of everything, the connector is the rare line item Lauren never has to defend. The lost product and lost revenue during the downtime alone more than cover it.
“I never have to justify the value, because the value is in the stress it takes away. If Shopify isn’t talking to your retail management system seamlessly, you’re in big trouble.”— Lauren Owers, Matchbox
The working relationship
What set SAAS Integrator apart for Matchbox was local expertise: a partner that already understood the Retail Express model and Australian retail, and that kept moving at pace to work with Matchbox’s complex Shopify build.
“You built it knowing the Retail Express model, and that’s been a key driver, because you know our business and you know Australian retail. That localisation really does help.”— Lauren Owers, Matchbox
“You have the knowledge of both systems to make life easier, and that’s why it works.”— Lauren Owers, Matchbox
What is next
The next stage is the rewards and loyalty connector, giving store staff visibility of a customer’s points and history at the counter without relying on the customer to bring it up. Beyond that, Matchbox wants to grow SMS and lean further into the native Shopify tooling the new foundation has unlocked.
“It’s about getting that seamless integration for rewards, so our staff can have better conversations with customers. They’ve got visibility of points and all that, without relying on the customer. This has given us foundations, so we don’t have to worry about band-aid fixes.”— Lauren Owers, Matchbox
In one sentence
Asked to sum up the difference:
“You made a lot of tricky, complex problems go away with the integration, and that’s what I wanted.”— Lauren Owers, Matchbox
And on whether she would recommend it to another multi-store retailer:
“I’ve already told people. Plugging Retail Express into Shopify just doesn’t work without a lot of integration. This is easy, and that’s what you want. Until you have it, you don’t know how good it is.”— Lauren Owers, Matchbox
Key metrics at a glance
Is your integration holding your business back?
Matchbox didn’t transform their operation through a feature list. They replaced the layer between Retail Express and Shopify with something built specifically for multi-store Australian retailers — and got their team back to doing the work that actually grows the business.
If the seams between Retail Express and Shopify are showing in your business, let’s talk. Troy Netreba has spent over a decade helping Australian retailers like Matchbox close the gap. Thirty minutes. No pitch deck. Just a conversation about what’s possible.
Book a discovery callAbout Matchbox
Matchbox is an Australian kitchenware retailer established in 1976, family-run and Australian-owned and operated. With 18 stores across Victoria and into WA and Queensland, mostly in major shopping centres, Matchbox showcases high-quality kitchenware brands from around the world and is expanding into the on-the-go category of hydration and travel products.
About SAAS Integrator
SAAS Integrator transforms how businesses operate by connecting their entire tech ecosystem seamlessly.
While others see us as just another integration platform, we look at every connection through a revenue lens. How can this help generate more leads? Drive more sales? Deliver exceptional customer experiences?
That mindset is why multi-store Australian retailers running Retail Express and Shopify trust us to unify their in-store and online operations — across click & collect, B2B pricing, location-based inventory, store-level reporting, and the next initiative on their roadmap.
