Overview

Niko Apparel Systems is a clothing and apparel manufacturing company based in Hamilton, Ontario. Since 1996, they’ve been making high-quality custom-made apparel in Canada, taking pride in their deep community roots and dedicated staff while seeing the positive impact of keeping manufacturing local.

Unlocking a better way to work

“With our growing business, we wanted to find a way to reduce trips to the store, gain visibility into purchasing and unlock more competitive pricing on the business side,” says Amy Fortin, Production Coordinator, Niko Apparel. “We were already using personal Amazon accounts and, once we heard about the benefits of Amazon Business, it was an easy decision!”

Making the switch to Business Prime helped unlock fast, free shipping, but they were just getting started. Account Authority empowered Niko Apparel to access tools that helped get control over their business accounts, which in turn helped reduce rogue spend, enforce best practices and simplify user onboarding and deregistration. Up next was implementing Amazon Business’s Buying Policies and Approvals, which helped drive compliance, ultimately resulting in more savings and greater transparency.

Empowering employees to work smarter

“By utilizing the approvals tool, we were able to let our employees add items to their cart, attach a PO number and submit it for approval, all within the account,” explains Amy Fortin. “This reduces the manual process of emailing requests (which sometimes get lost!) and gives us time back, since we know our employees are able to compare pricing on the marketplace. We also loved that, instead of paying for multiple Prime licences, we can share one among the entire organization.” 

The company also added Guided Buying, which helps create policies that maximize cost savings and drive purchasing compliance, as well as Pay by Invoice, which simplifies and streamlines purchasing. But ultimately what Amazon Business really helped Niko Apparel with was cost savings, which is vital for every small business. 

“As a small business, every dollar counts, and Amazon Business has helped us to consolidate suppliers, gain insights into our purchases and focus on our business,” says Amy Fortin. “We were able to save thousands on shipping costs, and love getting our packages delivered the next day!”