How Chris Cote’s Golf Shop Halved Custom Order Times with Shopify POS

Setting the Scene

When Chris Cote turned his weekend eBay sales into a brick-and-mortar store, he wasn’t just selling clubs—he was building a family business. Two retail outlets, two pro shops at golf courses, 75 driving range stalls, seasonal pop-ups: each new location exposed a disconnect in tools. QuickBooks tracked in-store sales, Shopify ran the website, Dropbox held order notes, and clinics were managed with whiteboards and manual emails. By the time customer demand spiked, the team was wrestling with oversells, misplaced orders, and hours wasted on routine updates. It was clear that sticking with patchwork systems would stall growth.

The Challenge: Fragmented Processes

Inventory had to be updated by hand if a club sold at the pro shop. Paper forms dictated every custom club build: shaft type, length, grip preference, head selection. Clinics required phone calls and spreadsheets to alert instructors when bookings happened. As bookings rose, so did risk: double-booked slots, lost order sheets, unhappy golfers. When QuickBooks announced sunsetting of its POS, the Cotés saw an opportunity to replace every disparate tool with a unified commerce platform.

The Solution: A Unified Commerce Rollout

Working with Shopify Plus partner Riess Group, the team mapped workflows and set an October go-live. Shopify POS was installed at four permanent locations and configured for pop-up events. But they didn’t stop at out-of-the-box: custom apps were built to digitize club orders and manage pro-shop credits. Shopify Flows sent automated emails to instructors when clinics sold out. Zapier bridged their booking system with Shopify, so customer records appeared instantly on check-in. Mailchimp linked email campaigns to purchase data. The result was an orchestration of systems that spoke to each other, removed manual prep, and gave staff back their weekends.

The Results: Smoother Operations and Faster Orders

By launch week, staff were ringing up sales and confirming clinic sign-ups without a single sticky note. Custom club orders processed 50% faster, and updates that once ate ten hours per week were automated. Inventory synced in real time across shops and pop-ups, so oversells became a thing of the past. Marketing campaigns fired automatically to segments born from a de-duplicated customer database. When the annual golf show arrived, mobile POS let the team carry every profile, every SKU, every saved cart to the convention floor. Behind the scenes, the family focuses on growth: refining workflows, planning new locations, and offering more clinics—all powered by a platform that scales.

Key Lessons Learned

A unified system isn’t a switch flip; it’s a design project. Spend time mapping every step and automate where it’s repetitive. Custom apps can transform paper processes into speed engines. Don’t treat pop-ups as side gigs—take your full stack with you. And when experts offer integration support, lean in: those partnerships keep deadlines realistic and stress low.

For small retailers eyeing growth, Chris Cote’s Golf Shop shows that the right tools let you serve more customers without adding chaos. Twenty years after selling the first club online, the Cotés are focused on two things: giving golfers a great experience, and scaling their family legacy.