Inside Washington’s Mount Rainier National Park, Whittaker Mountaineering is the place to go for the park’s more adventurous guests to prepare for their journeys to the summit. Founded by lifelong climbers and guides — and twin brothers — Jim and Lou Whittaker, the store rents and sells clothing and equipment to park guests as well as online.
Much of the clothing for sale is the company’s own clothing line, Bight Gear. They decided to overhaul many of their operational processes, one of which is their payment system. Shift4 was able to be their guide as they implemented a number of hardware and software improvements, thanks to Shift4’s end-to-end payment solution.
Building on a Quality Business Relationship
Before Whittaker Mountaineering became a Shift4 customer, the two companies crossed paths several times over the years. Members of the Shift4 leadership team have climbed Mount Rainier as well as Vinson Massif in Antarctica with RMI Expeditions — Jim and Lou’s company that provides guided climbs. Many of Shift4’s employees have also been to Rainier BaseCamp (home of Whittaker Mountaineering and RMI), and rented gear from the store for their Rainier climbs.
Whittaker Mountaineering switched their point-of-sale (POS) system to Wintersteiger Easyrent, which happens to be one of Shift4’s third-party integration partners. This provided Whittaker with an opportunity to adopt the rest of Shift4’s payment processing ecosystem, which provides everything a business needs to accept payments from a single source. Whittaker was able to use Shift4 as the only vendor for their entire payment system, including free key-injected EMV devices, gateway and encryption solutions, processor connection, eCommerce platform, and more.
This approach saved them the trouble of having to deal with a separate company for each of those components, which leads to miscommunication, delays, and higher costs. Shift4’s single-vendor implementation makes the process much simpler and more cost-effective.
The Cost Savings Were Immediate
The most noticeable benefit when businesses employ Shift4’s end-to-end solution is how competitive the rates and prices really are. Since Shift4 is the provider of all the payment processing components, they are able to be flexible with the pricing in ways that just aren’t possible with a multi-vendor implementation, with each vendor only able to control the pricing in their own section of the payment process.
Operational Improvements
The cost savings were not the only improvements the business saw. It has become a lot easier and faster to check out customers. The store was able to implement several additional revenue streams and payment methods that they didn’t have before Shift4. In upgrading to new customer-facing contactless EMV terminals, they can accept NFC payments like Apple Pay, which they say has helped them tremendously. They also made improvements to their card-not-present revenue centers, including a brand-new website, eCommerce store, and a more integrated phone order system (i.e., no more having to write credit cards down on a paper order form).
With all these new and improved systems in place, Whittaker Mountaineering is now running smoother than ever, with happier customers and a bigger bottom line.
“A good percentage rate and the customer-facing contactless terminals are the obvious benefits. However, it was pretty cool to get an email directly from Jared, the CEO, giving us a shout-out for switching to Shift4 and opening the door to go directly to him if we needed any assistance. We love the team at Shift4 and are really happy to be on board with a company that is helping small businesses save money.”
— Kerry Whittaker, Director of Operations Whittaker Mountaineering