Chicks Lifestyle Boosts Operational Efficiency by 30%, Eliminating Retail Bottlenecks

Since 1953, Chicks Lifestyle (Chicks) has been providing families with high-quality clothing through its retail stores in Hong Kong. A family-run business currently managed by sisters Alicia and Jennifer Tam, Chicks is renowned for its innerwear and thermal collection. The business is also committed to sustainability, with several lines of clothing made from natural and biodegradable materials. In 2017, Chicks began selling online.

However, recurring reliability and scalability issues with its in-house data center began to impact operations. Frequent server crashes during summer heatwaves caused 1–2 hours of downtime, disrupting in-store sales as point-of-sale (POS) systems went offline. In winter, demand surges—up to 10 times higher—resulted in system lags and long customer wait times at registers. To address these challenges and reduce technical debt and total cost of ownership, Chicks set its sights on cloud migration.

Chicks worked with Baro Solutions, an AWS Partner, to address its reliability and scalability challenges. With Baro’s guidance, Chicks decided to migrate to AWS, inspired by reference cases of similar local businesses that successfully transitioned to the cloud. The migration, completed in just six weeks with no data loss for critical SAP and POS systems, was a seamless process. Alicia Tam, director at Chicks Lifestyle, highlights the importance of Baro’s role: “Without Baro’s support, the migration could have taken four to six months. Their expertise in cloud architecture and understanding of both our legacy systems and AWS requirements were instrumental.”

Chicks now uses Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) instances with autoscaling to efficiently run its SAP and enterprise resource planning systems, while Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) provides redundant storage and automated backups to reduce the risk of data loss. Real-time data replication keeps inventory current at registers and during online checkouts, improving operational efficiency. To optimize cloud spending, the company adopted AWS Savings Plans and subscribed to AWS Developer Support, empowering its IT manager to effectively address any issues while working remotely. Baro continues to support Chicks as a managed service partner, ensuring smooth operations and ongoing cloud optimization.

By migrating to AWS, Chicks has significantly enhanced its operational reliability and efficiency. The retailer now achieves sub-second response times during peak demand periods, with operational efficiency increasing by 30 percent. With zero unplanned downtime, Chicks consistently maintains at least 99.99 percent system availability. This has had a tangible impact in-store, with transactions at POS terminals becoming 15 percent faster due to the removal of network bottlenecks. “AWS significantly improved stability and increased transaction rates. We can now monitor system performance and take a more proactive approach during peak application loads,” says Jennifer Tam, business development director at Chicks. The migration also brought cost savings, reducing monthly IT expenses by 40 percent compared to Chicks’ previous data center setup.

As an added benefit of the migration, Chicks has enhanced its loyalty database, which includes over 100,000 customers. Retrieving customer data could previously take up to 10 minutes; now, associates access purchase histories in under a second, easily creating personalized shopping experiences. This capability supports Chicks’ omnichannel marketing strategy, which aims to streamline customer engagement efforts via targeted messaging on WhatsApp and other platforms. Data security has also improved post-migration. “AWS provides us peace of mind with its extensive compliance certifications and robust encryption measures,” Jennifer adds. Additionally, eliminating the need for a server room has reduced energy consumption, aligning with Chicks’ commitment to sustainability.

With less time spent managing and troubleshooting technology, Chicks is exploring the use of generative AI and Amazon Q in QuickSight to upgrade its business intelligence (BI) tools. The tools currently in place are limited because they are desktop-based and require specialized expertise to deploy. With Amazon Q in QuickSight, the Tam sisters envision simply asking questions and receiving AI-generated responses based on backend data. Dashboards would be auto-generated, facilitating decision-making with timely insights.“We’re striving to make BI more user-friendly, so more people across the company can look at specific data for their department and use that data more efficiently. We also see incredible opportunities for higher marketing automation on AWS and customized promotions to increase sales,” Jennifer concludes.