Legacy to Cloud: How Chicks Lifestyle Transformed Its Retail Operations with AWS

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Legacy to Cloud: How Chicks Lifestyle Transformed Its Retail Operations with AWS

Published: 10:55am, 27 Jan 2025

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Chicks Lifestyle (Chicks) is a heritage clothing retailer in Hong Kong specializing in thermal and innerwear. To improve reliability and scalability during peak shopping periods, the company chose to migrate to Amazon Web Services (AWS). Since the migration, Chicks reports 99.99 percent availability with no downtime and has boosted operational efficiency by 30 percent. Customers enjoy improved service levels thanks to faster transaction rates and personalized offers in-store and through online marketing channels.

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.

Migrating SAP and POS Systems to AWS in Six Weeks

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.”