Business - Small Business - Success Stories

Nagomi Pharmacy

Providing personalised
care to an entire community. With Apple.

Nagomi Pharmacy has provided holistic, high-quality care to its customers in Tokyo since 2007. It’s a realisation of founder Hikaru Watanabe’s vision for a beautiful, welcoming space where people could access personalised care, comfortably ask questions and, most importantly, feel genuinely supported.

“As a child, I remember watching my parents run their ramen shop in Tokyo,” says Watanabe. “They were on their feet all day and work was tough on their bodies. I thought that maybe if I studied medicine, I could help them and people like them in some way. This is what inspired me to work in healthcare.”

For Nagomi Pharmacy to become a lasting pillar of the community, his pharmacists needed to have the time to connect with their customers — which meant streamlining operations and reducing time spent on administrative tasks. To support his goal, he used Apple technology to create a digitised inventory and order management system for his employees.

Without a viable off-the-shelf solution, Watanabe took it upon himself to build his own. Using FileMaker Pro on Mac, he made a custom digital system that offers a centralised place for staff to manage complex inventories of prescription drugs. The system ensures that all three Nagomi Pharmacy locations are well stocked, meeting customer needs and able to predict future orders. This also reduces the amount of expired medications, helping the pharmacy’s bottom line.

To further increase productivity and create a great user experience for his employees, Watanabe implemented iPad for pharmacists to fill prescriptions and update reports in real time — saving them hours of paperwork at the end of the day. To take full advantage of iPad, Watanabe built the Nagomi INDEX iPadOS app so that pharmacists can search through hundreds of medications and quickly locate them on the shelf, as well as access patient information from the shop floor. This also makes the onboarding process easier for new pharmacists, who are able to learn quickly and find everything they need in one place.

“Our pharmacists are essential to patient care. By reducing administrative tasks with iPad, we prevent burnout and retain top talent that benefits both our patients and our business,” says Watanabe.

To improve the customer experience and make the pharmacy more approachable, Watanabe also created an iOS app called Medical Pay, using Xcode on Mac, that enables customers to communicate directly with pharmacists, submit prescriptions and make payments from anywhere. Patients can even use it to securely speak with their pharmacist over built-in messaging feature if they want more information about their medication.

Because iPad allows them to collect and share information on location, Nagomi’s staff members can easily make house calls to patients across the city. With iPad, pharmacists access comprehensive health information and everything they need to accurately and securely make decisions on the go — resulting in better and more personalised patient care.

AJ Hackett Bungy New Zealand

Big thrills.
Epic footage.
Captured on iPhone.

As the world’s first commercial bungee jumping operator, AJ Hackett Bungy New Zealand has been in the business of delivering epic experiences since 1988.

For years, AJ Hackett Bungy NZ has invested in Apple technology to support its business operations, including communications, administration, marketing and IT. But it wasn’t until 2021 that the company began using iPhone to capture photos and videos of customer experiences.

Initially, AJ Hackett Bungy NZ used traditional cameras across its sites to record customer experiences. Video was live-streamed to an onsite production suite, where a director would manually sequence and edit the footage. It was a complex, expensive and labour-intensive process — especially considering some customers didn’t purchase the videos.

So when customer after customer began requesting to use their personal iPhone to take photos and videos of their experiences, AJ Hackett Bungy NZ knew it was time to switch things up. Impressed by iPhone’s consistent, high-quality image and video capture, combined with the ease of managing multiple lenses remotely, the company decided to go all in — and mounted over 90 iPhone Pro devices across its picturesque New Zealand sites to capture stills and video footage for its customers.

It also partnered with a local developer to build EpicShot, a custom app that utilises the power and performance of iOS VisionKit and ARKit SDKs to fully automate the photo and video capture of each experience. When a customer jumps, physical and digital triggers prompt EpicShot to capture footage and stills. Then the content is automatically stitched together and ready within minutes for the customer to enjoy and share.

The tech overhaul has paid off in a big way. Since switching over to iPhone, AJ Hackett Bungy NZ has seen a 44 per cent increase in photography and video packages provided to customers, a 75 per cent reduction in implementation and operational costs, and a total saving of US$370,000 per site.

Sock Club

Apple technology is woven into the fabric of these custom socks.

Former roommates, Noah Lee and Dane Jensen, started Sock Club to share their love of socks with the world. Their vision quickly grew from a small subscription service into a bespoke sock design and manufacturing business — making over 15 million pairs of socks for consumers and some of the world’s biggest brands.

Lee and Jensen’s goal is to build a meaningful and lasting company that pushes the textile industry forward. From paying employees fairly and manufacturing responsibly to donating 100,000 pairs of socks every year to people in need, Sock Club is showing how a small business can make a huge impact.

The co-founders choose Mac to empower every member of the team to do their best work across their company locations — from the creative minds in design to the dynamic forces in sales. Designers rely on Mac because it runs powerful creative apps like Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator that help them turn ideas into bespoke designs. And collaboration apps like Slack and Front keep design and sales teams in constant communication — helping them stay synchronised while juggling an ever-growing number of custom orders.

Sock Club also provides iPad and iPhone to its knitting teams in its North Carolina mills. Now, instead of typing order information by hand, they use iPad and iPhone to scan QR codes to schedule and program designs on the knitting machines. That information is automatically available to the sales team in Texas, where they use CRM apps like Hubspot on iPad to generate customer order details, create shipping labels, and take photos of products to send to customers.

Every one of Sock Club’s 45 employees wears a lot of hats to keep the business running. In fact, Max Williamson, VP of Customer Success and Strategic Partnerships, takes on the additional responsibility of being the company’s de facto IT department. Max turns to Apple Business Essentials to deploy and configure devices with ease. What used to take hours now only needs 15 minutes to get new machines up and running for employees. He’s also able to manage the entire fleet of Apple devices from Texas to North Carolina remotely — which helps the team to concentrate on the business, not tech support.

With Mac, iPhone and iPad, every member of the company is equipped with the best tools to innovate the textile industry in a socially responsible way. So this small but mighty team can carry out their mission to put their socks on every foot in the world.

R.M.Williams

iPhone is transforming customer service for an iconic boot brand.

Since 1932, R.M.Williams has been proudly handcrafting boots in Australia. Skilled craftspeople make the footwear in their Adelaide workshop with painstaking attention to detail — each boot is touched by more than 80 pairs of hands. With over 60 stores and 1,100 employees across 15 countries, the brand is committed to providing every customer with a personalised shopping experience for the perfect fit.

iPhone has replaced the traditional point of sale and transformed the shopping experience at R.M.Williams stores. Employees are more mobile and engaged and can better provide customers with a personalised, end-to-end experience in a more open, welcoming environment.

With the NewStore app on iPhone, store employees look up stock, access endless aisle, order items for delivery and complete payment with Tap To Pay on iPhone without ever leaving their customer’s side. Teams also use Apple devices to support in-store operations such as backend inventory, performance dashboards, scheduling and company communications.

It’s also quick and easy to train store employees to use iPhone. They can easily access training videos and material, which gives them the confidence to process sales in just a few hours. And set-up is just as simple — with remote configuration via zero-touch deployment, employees use iPhone straight out of the box.

By streamlining operations and empowering employees to be mobile, iPhone saves the R.M.Williams employees around an hour a day. They now reinvest that time into enhancing the customer and employee experience which has resulted in an increase in sales. This commitment shows that the quality of R.M.Williams’ service is rivalled only by the quality of its product.

Saturnbird

Saturnbird is brewing something special with Mac.

Saturnbird is a coffee company based in Shanghai, China, whose innovative products and design focus has earned them massive growth and a devoted fanbase. Their patented extraction process is shaking up the coffee industry and has helped them scale from a single café to a globally popular company delivering flavour to over 10 million customers online.

Saturnbird attributes this success to their dynamic workforce — which has increased to 230 employees — and to the Apple devices and software they rely on. The company focuses on attracting and nurturing top talent by enhancing engagement and the employee experience at every interaction. They say choosing Mac has made a huge difference by increasing creativity and productivity.

All development happens on Mac, from conception to final product — employees rely on Mac for exceptional power and speed. And with all-day battery life*, product managers can stay mobile within the office and as they travel. The team also utilises Feishu, a comprehensive collaboration app on Mac, and makes the most of Apple’s built-in apps like Freeform, Keynote and Pages for productivity — enabling them to seamlessly pick up their workflows on iPhone and iPad, whenever needed.

The design team uses Mac to make everything from graphics to award-winning packaging design. They prefer Mac because of its compatibility with industry-leading creativity apps, like Cinema 4D and Rhino, and its ability to power through heavy tasks like 3D rendering. “Mac makes the pro workflow smooth and easy,” says Lian Wang, co‑founder.

Mac has proven to be popular for users and IT alike. 82 per cent of Saturnbird’s employees choose to work on it. With streamlined management and security features, Mac enables the IT manager to address all company IT support needs single-handedly. Since adoption, Saturnbird has experienced zero security incidents on their devices. And by using built-in features such as FileVault and XProtect, they save on not having to manage third-party security add-ons.

Trusted by members from every team, Apple technology has become core to Saturnbird’s flavourful culture. And with each cup of delicious, aromatic coffee, customers get to savour the benefits.

* Battery life varies by use and configuration.

Señor Sisig

A recipe for culinary success with Apple.

Childhood friends Evan Kidera and Gil Payumo share a passion for bringing authentic flavours to their community. They brought it to life when they launched their first Filipino-Mexican fusion food truck, combining tacos and burritos with the signature flavours of sisig — a rustic Filipino dish with a family twist from Payumo’s childhood. Starting with one food truck, Señor Sisig has grown to four trucks and three restaurants across the San Francisco Bay Area in California, USA.

As the business grew, so did opportunities to increase their operational efficiency. To increase productivity and maintain consistency across all locations, they centralised food preparations to a single commercial kitchen and built a technology infrastructure with Apple products and services.

Kitchen managers use Mac and iPad with the Foodager app to monitor all incoming ingredients and distribute cooked food across all locations. For training and onboarding, they turn to the Opus Training app on iPad to share content like recipe books and videos on how to roll burritos “the Sisig” way. And Slack on iPhone helps their mobile workforce stay connected for instant troubleshooting and seamless communication.

To scale community engagement and awareness, the team creates and shares unique, homegrown content shot on iPhone to keep customers updated on everything from daily specials to collaborations with local artists. They also use Apple Business Connect to build their customer base. “We use Apple Business Connect so people can use our place cards in Apple Maps to find us, as well as order their food and complete their payment,” says Kidera.

Señor Sisig is bringing truly authentic flavours to more people in their community. And with Apple hardware and services, Payumo and Kidera have all the ingredients they need to serve the best burritos in town.

Dance

This e-bike subscription company uses Swift to crack the code for speedy growth.

Dance is an e-bike subscription service founded by Eric Quidenus-Wahlforss, Alexander Ljung and Christian Springub in 2020. Their goal is to give people friction-free access to electric bikes — making cities more about people and the planet and less about cars. To fulfil the company’s mission, they needed a platform that offered flexibility and security in order to scale. That’s why they decided to use Apple products from day one.

At the head office in Germany, every employee uses Mac to support collaboration and productivity. Designers and developers work on Mac to create and test prototypes. In the workshop, mechanics use iPhone to access an e-bike’s service history by scanning a QR code attached to each frame. And everyone uses iPad to manage time sheets and shifts, simplifying workflows. Even Dance’s customers can use iPhone, to contact the maintenance team and schedule roadside repairs directly through the app.

When Dance employees needed a custom app to streamline workflows for their mechanics and operations team, they built it in Swift, Apple’s powerful and intuitive programming language. Nynke de Boer, one of Dance’s early employees, was able to learn Swift in a few weeks and create the custom iOS app in a matter of months. Dance also used Swift to build an app for customers to manage their accounts and view real-time journey data from their e-bikes. Swift makes it easy to continuously update the app to meet new business needs as the company grows.

Dance has rolled out its e-bikes in five major European cities to date. It relies on the built-in security of every Apple device to protect company and customer data as it continues to scale quickly. Staying nimble with the most powerful and flexible tools in an evolving work environment is why Dance chose Apple. And its business only continues to pick up speed, reaching new riders every single day.