How Fynd is helping Kotu bring its warehouse, stores and online shop onto one connected system

If you've ever picked up a school uniform for your child, chances are you've come across a business like Kotu (Kids of Tomorrow United) without even realizing it. Kotu makes and sells school uniforms through a unique retail model: parents shop at outlets located right next to their kids' schools. This local footprint is supported by one central warehouse and a Shopify store that offers the same products to anyone shopping online.

It’s a real, functioning business - sourcing from external manufacturers, stocking a warehouse, running multiple sales counters, and managing orders in several ways: walk-ins, bulk school orders and online purchases. You’d expect such an operation to run on solid systems because, well, it really needs to.

But it didn’t.

The challenge: No system talked to another

Kotu had grown into a true multi-channel business before it had the right systems in place. Shopify powered the online store. Zoho POS handled sales at the counters. Zoho Books took care of accounting. But none of these systems talked to each other.

What did that mean day-to-day?

No bin-level tracking

Items weren’t tied to specific shelves or bins in the warehouse. Finding something meant physically walking the warehouse floor. Auditing stock meant the same - going bin by bin without any digital system to cross-check against.

Manual reconciliation

Stock across one warehouse and seven outlets was tracked without a unified, real-time system. Reconciliation was a manual chore - someone had to cross-check numbers by hand on a schedule that never quite kept up with how fast stock actually moved.

Inventory mismatches

Discrepancies between what the system showed and what was actually on shelves were common. These gaps didn’t announce themselves - they showed up when a customer was promised an item that wasn’t there or when planning was based on inaccurate numbers.

No item-level traceability

A specific uniform couldn’t be tracked from the warehouse to the outlet to the customer. If something got lost, damaged, or sent to the wrong place, there was no way to pinpoint where it happened.

Disconnected online and in-store orders

Shopify orders and in-store sales lived in completely separate systems. An outlet might run out of a product the online store was still promising to ship with neither side knowing until it was too late.

The solution: How Fynd connected everything under one dashboard 

Fynd’s helped the brand connecting warehouse, the online store and every counter with one shared backbone without touching Kotu’s accounting systems.

This came together as three integrated pieces: 

Giving the warehouse a foundation

Bin and location-based tracking so every item is visible and easy to find the moment it arrives. A scan-to-confirm goods receipt process and a unique barcode for each unit. Rack mapping was optional at launch, so Kotu didn’t have to finalize its warehouse layout before getting started.

Giving every order one home

One system that pulls in every order from all channels, shares one catalogue everywhere, and routes orders based on rules Kotu sets. Partial order rejections lead to second shipments instead of cancellations.

Giving every counter the same picture

A cloud-based POS live across all outlets, sharing the same stock information as the warehouse and OMS. It supports returns, exchanges, staff tracking and GST compliance.

The rollout was carefully phased around how Kotu operates: an in-person warehouse visit before setup, training scheduled at Kotu’s preferred times, and a plan that covers the current warehouse now plus a new one coming soon - ready well before the next busy season. Integration with Zoho Books remains a separate phase.

The outcomes built to deliver 

The goal wasn’t just a polished version of what Kotu had before. It was to create a business where the warehouse, every outlet, and the online store all share one reliable source of truth - where lost stock, double-booked orders, and disconnected demand streams become things of the past.

In practical terms, that means:

• Recorded stock and actual stock match perfectly - no more manual catch-up reconciliations

• Every uniform is traceable from warehouse to outlet to customer

• One shared stock view across all channels - so the same item never appears available in two places at once

• A support model that sticks around after launch - a dedicated contact, a hypercare period right after go-live and ongoing SLA-tracked support

Kotu didn’t need a complete overhaul. It needed systems that could keep up with its growth. This is a common challenge for many growing retailers and exactly why it’s so important to get it right the first time.

Running a multi-channel business with no single system watching all of it? Let's fix that.

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