Executive summary
The Dream Factory Kenya, a Nairobi-based retail brand, was running its physical store, e-commerce and back-office on disconnected tools — with inventory reconciled manually between Shopify, spreadsheets and paper receipts. Redian implemented Odoo as the operating backbone: Sales, Inventory, Point of Sale and a native Shopify connector, all sharing one product catalogue, one stock ledger and one accounting layer. Store staff now sell from an Odoo POS terminal that debits the same warehouse the Shopify orders draw from, and finance closes each day from a single dashboard.
About the client
The Dream Factory Kenya is a Nairobi-based retail and lifestyle business selling through its flagship physical store and its Shopify e-commerce site. The brand serves domestic customers as well as walk-in tourist trade, with a product mix that turns fast enough to make manual stock reconciliation a chronic pain point.
The challenge
The business was running four disconnected surfaces: a Shopify storefront for online orders, a manual POS at the physical store, spreadsheets for inventory, and QuickBooks-style bookkeeping for finance. Every reconciliation between them was manual — stock levels on Shopify drifted from what was actually on the shelf, POS sales were re-keyed into finance at day-end, and management had no real-time picture of what was selling where. Growth was being throttled by back-office friction, not by demand.
- Shopify catalogue, physical-store stock and back-office finance running as three separate systems with manual reconciliation
- No real-time visibility into what was selling online vs in-store, or which SKUs were about to go out of stock
- POS receipts re-keyed into finance at day-end, with reconciliation errors and delays
- Product catalogue variants (size, colour, style) modelled inconsistently across Shopify and in-store operations
- No unified customer record across walk-in POS buyers and online Shopify customers
Our approach
Redian led an Odoo implementation covering Sales, Inventory, Point of Sale and Accounting, with a Shopify integration layer built on Odoo's native connector plus custom mapping for The Dream Factory's product structure. The store POS terminals were configured to sell against the same product catalogue and stock locations the Shopify orders consume from — so a sale at the till and a sale on the website both decrement the same inventory in real time. Finance now closes the day from Odoo's dashboards, with journal entries flowing automatically from POS sessions and Shopify orders.
What we built
- Odoo Sales — quotations, sales orders and customer records as the master system for all commerce
- Odoo Inventory — one product catalogue, one stock ledger, multi-location tracking across store and web
- Odoo Point of Sale — offline-capable POS terminals at the physical store, sharing catalogue and stock with the rest of Odoo
- Odoo–Shopify connector with custom mapping for product variants, categories, images, pricing tiers and stock levels
- Odoo Accounting — automated journal entries from POS sessions and Shopify orders, day-end close from a single dashboard
- Unified customer data model so a walk-in POS buyer and an online buyer are the same customer record
Implementation
- 01Discovery — process mapping across store operations, Shopify catalogue and finance close
- 02Configure — Odoo Sales, Inventory, POS and Accounting tuned to The Dream Factory's product and pricing structure
- 03Integrate — Odoo–Shopify connector with custom mapping for variants, categories, images and multi-tier pricing
- 04POS rollout — terminals installed at the physical store with staff training and offline-mode testing
- 05Migrate — historical products, customers and stock into Odoo without disrupting live selling
- 06Adopt — walk-throughs for store, e-commerce and finance teams; day-end close playbook
- 07Run — managed support and iterative optimisation on new promotions, product ranges and reporting
Outcomes & impact
- Single source of truth for stock across the physical store and Shopify — no more manual reconciliation
- Real-time inventory levels on Shopify reflect what is actually on the shelf, reducing oversells and refund costs
- POS sessions post automatically to accounting — day-end close is minutes, not hours
- Management dashboards show live sales by channel, category and SKU across the whole business
- Platform ready to add additional stores, warehouses and sales channels on the same backbone
Technology stack
The platforms, frameworks and tools behind this engagement — grouped by role.
- CRM / ERP
- Odoo (Sales, Inventory, Point of Sale, Accounting)Odoo–Shopify Connector
- Languages & Backend
- Python
- Data
- PostgreSQL
- Platforms & Tools
- Shopify
Why this matters
Retail businesses in Kenya and across East Africa consistently hit the same operational wall: the physical store, the Shopify site and the finance ledger are three different systems that only talk to each other through spreadsheets and end-of-day rekeying. Stock levels drift, refunds pile up from Shopify oversells, and management runs the business on last week's numbers.
Odoo is the right shape for this problem when the business is past the spreadsheet stage but not ready to commit to a seven-figure SAP or Oracle stack. It gives a single product catalogue, a single stock ledger and a single accounting layer — with Sales, POS and Shopify integration as first-class citizens rather than bolt-ons.
What this unlocked
With Odoo as the operating backbone, The Dream Factory Kenya now runs their store, their POS terminals and their Shopify storefront off one product catalogue and one stock ledger. A sale at the till and a sale on the website decrement the same inventory in real time. Finance closes the day from one dashboard. Management can see live sales by channel, category and SKU without waiting for someone to consolidate spreadsheets.
The same platform is ready to extend — additional stores, additional warehouses, additional sales channels — without another integration project each time.
Related expertise
As an Odoo Official Partner, Redian delivers Odoo implementations for retail, distribution, manufacturing and services businesses across Kenya and the wider East Africa region. See our CRM & ERP practice for how we approach ERP selection, implementation and ongoing support.
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