The challenge
The Corner Store sells stationery, ceramics, and homeware from a shophouse in Tiong Bahru — around 1,900 SKUs, many from small local makers who deliver a dozen units at a time. The old till knew prices but not stock, so inventory lived in owner Daniel Lim's head and a Sunday-night stocktake ritual.
Daily close meant reconciling the till roll against card receipts by hand — two hours most nights, longer when the numbers refused to agree. And the shop had no real online presence: an Instagram page took DM orders that Daniel fulfilled from memory, occasionally selling something that had already gone out the door that afternoon.
“I knew my stock the way you know your own kitchen — which works until you're closed on a Tuesday and someone DMs asking if the blue teapot is still in.”
Daniel Lim
Owner, The Corner Store
One platform instead of four tools
The Corner Store started with POS and Inventory together, which is the pairing that matters: every sale decrements stock the moment it's rung up. The Sunday stocktake shrank from a full evening to a spot check, and low-stock alerts now flag a maker's line before the shelf goes empty rather than after.
Six months in, Daniel turned on the Website and E-commerce modules — and because the storefront sells from the same inventory as the till, the DM-era problem of selling a vase that no longer existed simply can't happen. The gift hampers were the surprise hit: built as bundles, their availability is computed from the components, so the 'Tiong Bahru Morning' set shows sold out the moment the shop runs out of any one item in it, instead of Daniel finding out while packing the box.
Customers came last. Repeat buyers — and a neighborhood shop lives on them — now have purchase history attached, so when a regular asks 'what was that pen I bought in March?', the answer takes four seconds.
“The hampers were the revelation. The bundle checks its own ingredients — if the last candle sells over the counter, the hamper marks itself sold out online. I never think about it.”
Daniel Lim
Owner, The Corner Store
The results
Daily close is a ten-minute job: the POS totals and payment records already agree, because they were never separate. Daniel gets his evenings back, and the bookkeeper gets clean numbers instead of a shoebox of till rolls.
Online went from a DM sideline to 31% of revenue within a year, with hampers alone accounting for a third of that. Stock accuracy — measured against quarterly counts — sits at 98.5%, which for a shop full of one-off maker items is the difference between confident reordering and guesswork.
“Two hours of reconciliation became ten minutes, and honestly the ten minutes is mostly me making tea while the report loads.”
Daniel Lim
Owner, The Corner Store
What's next
Daniel is adding gift add-ons to the storefront for the holiday season — wrapping and handwritten cards with a daily cap, so the two-person team never promises more wrapping than an evening can produce.
He's also talking to three of his makers about consignment reporting, now that per-SKU sales data actually exists to share with them.