Case Study: Orchard Supply Hardware achieves simplified IT and rapid store rollouts with Cisco Meraki

Orchard Supply Hardware - Customer Case Study

Orchard Supply Hardware (OSH), a home-improvement retailer with over 70 stores in California and Oregon, faced a constrained IT staff in San Jose and an aging on‑premises network that hindered critical tasks like inventory scanning and price lookups. OSH turned to Cisco Meraki cloud‑managed access points and switches (starting with MR16 APs and later adopting MS220 switches) to replace the controller model and gain a more reliable, easily managed wireless network.

Cisco Meraki delivered a unified cloud dashboard and Meraki APs/switches that enabled remote firmware scheduling, per‑device VLAN/IP visibility, live cable tests and rapid provisioning. With Meraki, OSH executed a full IP schema redesign and hardware refresh across its stores—updating an average of 24–26 stores per week, deploying up to seven stores simultaneously, and completing the rollout by the end of August—while minimizing store disruption. The Meraki platform (about 2 MS220 switches and ~11 APs per store) cut deployment and troubleshooting time, reduced ongoing maintenance burden for the lean IT team, and added Layer 3/7 security and future capabilities like VoIP and marketing analytics.

Orchard Supply Hardware

Moon Son

Senior Director of IT