AmeriCommerce Blog

Next Projection Taps Into 40% More Revenue With AmeriCommerce

2020-03-05T15:59:00-06:00

Brian Gluck founded Next Projection in April of 2014 and currently manages two online stores www.4kprojectors.com and www.projectorscreen.com. “We’re an audio/visual reseller with a particular focus on the projection equipment niche,” Brian said. “When beginning the business I found that there were a ton of people out there trying to shop for projector screens that didn't have a good resource to shop online. There were people that tried to position themselves as specialists in the field but I didn’t think they were doing as good of a job as I thought I could do. So I decided to use the experience and expertise I had built over my career to solve that by becoming that specialist myself. I set out to build this brand dedicated to delivering projector screens directly to the consumer - and I never looked back.”

How it all began

With a mission to become the world's largest online resource for projector screens, Brian started his company with rolled up sleeves ready to take on the industry. As a bootstrapped start-up, Next Projection began its journey into ecommerce with channels such as Amazon, Ebay, and Google which was critical for raising revenue at the onset, but Brian found that things would quickly shift in a different direction. “When we launched the business and were waiting for the ramp-up of the actual e-commerce website to be developed, Amazon was probably our largest mechanism for income because there is a very low barrier for entry there. We used that Amazon revenue to help develop the real online store.” And now? “Our online store revenue blows away the Amazon revenue...and we have control over the messaging, we have control over the customer, and we have control over the experience” Brian said.

The largest challenge selling projector equipment

The largest challenge in selling projector equipment was managing the tremendous amount of data from manufacturers that relied on a heavy use of product attributes. “We started this website with 20,000 SKUs. Every SKU of every screen has several attributes assigned to it so we needed a platform that didn’t limit variants and attribute combinations like Shopify does. Just managing that data in itself was a challenge, not to mention finding a platform that would allow us the full control we were looking for.

...we needed a platform that didn’t limit variants and attribute combinations like Shopify does."

Where AmeriCommerce fit in

AmeriCommerce’s robust attribute system played a critical role in bringing Brian’s online store to life. “If AmeriCommerce didn’t have that robust, attribute-faceted navigation, there is no way my business would survive. It’s crucial because we have too many SKUs and we have to enable people to come in and narrow down the selection off of the criteria that is important to them."

How to decide “The Right Platform”

Self Hosted VS SaaS

“With a relatively small team - without full-time designers and full-time developers - a small business owner has to find resources to fill in the gaps where necessary,” Brian said. AmeriCommerce fills in those gaps for Next Projection. “You’re a great partner to work with. Your team supports the servers and all of the infrastructure for me so I don’t have to do any of that stuff that I would have to worry about if I had to host the site on my own. Companies that are using platforms like Magento or Woocommerce need an agency and sometimes even a full team of developers just to keep it running. Even then you’ll still hit limitations! Thanks to you guys I don’t have to worry about any of that so it frees me up to focus my time and money on other things in my business.”

Platform Value

AmeriCommerce didn’t just provide a competitive advantage, the platform also provided Brian with an affordable way to enter the marketplace. “[AmeriCommerce] is an unparalleled value for what you are getting. There is no other software out there with as low of a barrier to entry that is going to provide you the feature set and the flexibility for that price point. The investment in getting started in e-commerce with AmeriCommerce was negligible with what we would be paying for SEO, or Google AdWords, or those other types of things. I spend more on my phone system than I do AmeriCommerce.”

Technical Flexibility

Business owners understand the reality that there’s usually not a one-size-fits-all software for everything a business would need to operate. That’s why AmeriCommerce has developed one of the industry’s most robust and extensive REST API’s available. Brian’s need to manipulate his large amount of data grew more and more as he introduced even more product catalogs . “We needed something with full API access so we could use our middle-ware for data-manipulation and automation. With your API access we can do a tremendous amount of things that we want and how we want. Without AmeriCommerce we would have wasted a lot of time, energy, and money trying out other applications only to discover where their shortcomings were, or having to adapt how we wanted to do business to fit what they offered. I don’t feel that way with AmeriCommerce. The AmeriCommerce developers have been extremely helpful in getting our third party application streamlined with the data presented through the online store.”

Ability To Scale

Many e-commerce platforms charge a percentage of the online store’s sales or will force the user to higher “enterprise” plan levels due to increased sales volume. Both are options Brian refuses to consider. “Why should I be penalized for being more successful? What do they do to deserve that percentage of my company other than provide me software? If you believe you are going to be successful, you don’t want to pay that commission trust me. It adds up fast.” AmeriCommerce’s flat-rate subscription model provides Next Projection with the cost consistency Brian desires without penalizing his success.

In addition, the AmeriCommerce experience increases productivity for Next Projection which is yet another avenue to help the business scale. “By being able to provide an awesome experience for our end-users, with lots of information and enabling them to find what they need with ease, we reduce our burden of having to have sales people...and my website operates 24/7 whereas my sales team only works eight hours a day,” Brian said.

Taking advantage of your tools

Business owners, especially start-ups, looking for an e-commerce platform need value and flexibility as they grow. Next Projection took advantage of AmeriCommerce's strengths in these areas. “Your platform provided me with a better value, with more functions and features than anything else out there. There is no way I could run a sophisticated e-commerce business with multiple SKUs and multiple stores with that T-shirt selling software everyone else keeps talking about,” Brian concluded.

Your platform provided me with a better value, with more functions and features than anything else out there.

Final Thoughts:

Ending the interview we asked Brian if he had one piece of advice for others out there starting an online store. “Focus your energies on items that have less online competition,” he said. In following his passion for projection equipment and partnering with AmeriCommerce, Brian has found tremendous success. “1,000 percent I would recommend [AmeriCommerce]. It’s just an unparalleled value for what you are getting.”

Why Meadow Farms chose Cart.com’s B2B Commerce Platform to solve their micro-store needs

2024-09-03T16:11:52-05:00

Founded in 1968, Meadow Farms stands as New England’s oldest and largest fundraising company, based in Massachusetts. As a leader in the fundraising industry, Meadow Farms found itself at a crossroads when it came to selecting an ecommerce platform that could meet its complex needs. Their existing system, while functional, lacked the flexibility and features necessary to manage a rapidly growing number of micro-stores and the complexity of orders originating from multiple warehouses. CEO, Tim Jones needed a platform that could streamline operations, reduce manual labor, and improve the customer experience.

In this case study, Tim Jones shares why Meadow Farms ultimately chose Cart.com as their e-commerce platform to manage their multiple micro catalogs (or micro-stores), highlighting the specific features that made the difference and how the platform has positively impacted their operations.

The Need for a Flexible Platform

"Fundraising is very unique," says Tim Jones. Meadow Farms wasn't just looking for a basic ecommerce solution; they needed a platform that could manage their fundraising model, which involves orders coming from multiple warehouses and supporting thousands of micro-stores where each micro-store represented a single student in classroom. He needed a platform that could handle the diverse requirements of each student, from product customization, profile customization to order processing. Cart.com’s templated engines provided the perfect solution, allowing Meadow Farms to manage and scale their storefront without sacrificing the unique needs of each school district, student and catalog.

In addition, Tim needed a platform that could integrate with other tools, like Avalara, to manage sales tax across numerous states. "The fact that you guys had Avalara was really a comforting thing" Tim notes. This was one of the key factors in Tim’s decision, especially given the complexities of selling nationally.

Saving Time and Reducing Customer Service Calls

One of the standout features of Cart.com for Meadow Farms was the ability to combine orders from multiple micro-stores into a single transaction and breaking each line item out by warehouse. This not only improved the customer experience but also reduced the workload for their customer service team as some schools allowed cold storage items from warehouse A while others relied on a separate warehouse for typically sold goods in warehouse B especially knowing his fulfillment network is bound to grow. Plus, keeping this capability while simultaneously allowing users to split purchases for multiple students in a single order was yet another feather in the cap for Cart.com.

"We have a lot of siblings that fundraise together," Tim explains. "You can take a single order and check out with 4 items going to one sibling and 4 items going to the other. It’s a single transaction, customers paying one shipping charge."

With other ecommerce platforms they didn’t have that option. Historically, they would get customer service complaints from shoppers saying they wanted to purchase the items, but didn’t want to pay shipping costs on a second order. "We don’t get any more of those calls, and that was huge," says Tim. With the reduction of customer service calls, it helped the team to focus more on critical tasks.

Streamlining Operations with Scheduled Exports

Another time-saving feature for Meadow Farms was the ability to schedule exports directly to external vendors, such as magazine publishers. Previously, Meadow Farms had to manually run export processes daily, which was time-consuming and prone to errors. With Cart.com, these processes were automated using a scheduled export feature, freeing up valuable time and resources. “It’s 5 minutes, 10 minutes every day... something that doesn’t need to be done manually,” Tim explained.

Enhancing Competitive Advantage Through Cart.com’s Checkout Experiences

Tim believes that the key to maintaining a competitive edge is providing superior customer experience, something Cart.com has helped them achieve by minimizing customer service issues and streamlining the checkout process.

"A customer service call is not always negative. It’s an opportunity to impress your customer with how you manage the situation," Tim says. "But at the same time, how many of those people get frustrated and never call you and never place an order?" By addressing potential issues before they arise, Cart.com has helped Meadow Farms create a smoother, more satisfying customer journey.

"The best experience is when someone just understands what they’re getting, understands what they’re paying for, understands how to do it themselves, and just checks out and feels happy about the experience," Tim explains.

Significant Growth in the Digital Channel

While Tim doesn't have concrete analytics from their previous platform to compare, he has observed a notable increase in the digital channel's performance since switching to Cart.com. "We’ve seen definitely a 20% increase in just our digital channel relative to our paper sales growth," Tim notes. This growth has been particularly evident in the online-only fundraising accounts, which have become the single largest grower in their business while he expects growth to grow even more.

A Platform That Supports Large-Scale Operations

With over 50,000 micro-stores now running on Cart.com and thousands being added every year, Meadow Farms needed a platform that could handle large-scale operations without missing a beat. "I think we're over 50,000 now," Tim says. “The ability to manage such a vast number of micro-stores efficiently was another crucial factor in choosing Cart.com.”

Advice for Others Considering Cart.com

For those just starting in ecommerce, Tim emphasizes the importance of choosing a platform that can adapt to your needs as your business grows. "Getting into the ecommerce game has to be holistic," Tim advises. "Someone has to understand intrinsically what their buyer wants and then how to present that information through their ecommerce platform."

Tim also highlights the importance of flexibility, especially when offering complex products. "Having the ability to have the flexibility of the product displays, especially for someone who might be offering a more complex product of sizes or colors, would be critical," he says.

Conclusion

Meadow Farms chose Cart.com for its depth of features, flexibility, and fair pricing. But beyond the technical capabilities, it was the personal support and commitment from the Cart.com services team that solidified their decision. "Your involvement in our account is really what's kept us," Tim says. "At this stage in my career and game, I want to work with people I want to work with, and I want to have someone I know is dependable".

For Meadow Farms, Cart.com wasn't just a platform; it’s a partner in their growth and success.

Corporate branding company invests in Cart.com to modernize its B2B portal technology

2024-02-22T12:18:16-06:00

In 2009, over a decade before the pandemic-driven shifts in buying habits towards ecommerce, Interform realized that their customers’ needs would be better served through providing an online shopping solution. Namely, providing each of their clients their own custom webstore, where they could easily order promotional materials from Interform.

As it so happened, the ERP Interform was using at the time already had an ecommerce component, so they adapted it to serve as their customer-facing online store. However, due to ERP’s inflexibility, limited features, and dated interface, they eventually realized like many others that this make-work solution not only wouldn’t fit their needs but it would make it difficult to scale.

The Problem with Shoehorning Solutions

“The ERP platform wasn’t easy to use,” said Web Development Manager Jason Grow. “The look and feel was not modern, and we ran into limitations as to what we could customize. Also, the platform was locked. You couldn’t go out and find your own plugins or make connections.”

Jason was dissatisfied with this make-work system, and Interform’s customers were disappointed, too. They had high expectations for the online store Interform was going to give them, and voiced concerns that the ERP-based stores didn’t match their vision. “Those that felt strongest about the old ERP represented a quarter of our business. We wanted to find a different shopping cart solution that best fit their—and our—needs,” Jason admits. “In addition to existing customers, there were opportunities on the table that could only move forward by investing in a proper online store platform.”

They had to find a new solution—and quickly. But they couldn’t just go with any old alternative (that’s how they got in trouble in the first place.)

“We needed to find a platform that would allow multiple stores, where each store could be personalized separately, but all managed from one backend,” Jason said.

They first approached BigCommerce, one of the bigger names in the ecommerce sphere, but Jason and his team couldn’t make it work for their specific needs. “We were able to set up different stores, but because all permissions were shared, we weren’t able to give each store the individual admin rights that they needed. We were able to provide each store with their own unique branding, true, but that was a paid customization, not a built-in feature.

The Benefits of a Flexible Multi Store Platform

After a few discouraging false starts, Jason and his team found AmeriCommerce by Cart.com.

“I found them just by googling ‘multi-store,” Jason shares, and it wasn’t long before Cart.com’s product offering proved itself to be Interform’s ideal solution.

Unlike its competitors, AmeriCommerce could run multi-stores with a high degree of customization and individuality. Customer teams were granted the permissions necessary to make their own changes and perform their own updates. This streamlined the store management process tremendously and required less manual effort by the Interform web team.

Also, the sheer variety of integrations and add-ons that could be used with AmeriCommerce (such as a product customizer for creating things like business cards or shirts) was key in getting stores to function the way that consumer brands wanted. Jason shared, “Being able to have custom payment and shipping methods, gift cards, a rewards system, all those things definitely factored into our decision.”

It’s these capabilities that are giving Interform its competitive edge, according to Jason. “We’re able to offer a more customized look, feel, and operation of stores than most of our other competitors. Our competitors are using a more generic platform that doesn’t offer the same flexibility that Cart.com provides.”

In adopting AmeriCommerce, Interform both strengthened its position with current accounts and invested in a more robust online shopping platform that would help attract and grow future business through technological innovation.

The shift to AmeriCommerce proved to be a wise and impactful decision, as it reassured Interform’s most vocal customer critics that their concerns were being given serious consideration and that the company was taking steps to not only resolve them but continue its innovation into the ecommerce space.

Of course, starting up a multi-store isn’t as simple as it sounds. There is a degree of setup involved. But fortunately, Interform had help for that, too.

The Value of Professional Services

“Cart.com’s customer service has been fantastic,” Jason said.

“Their implementation team has been invaluable, especially when you take into account so much customization that had to be done before we could get rolling. The first stores we started with were our most difficult stores.”

The Cart.com implementation team was able to get Interform’s webstores up and running within 6 months—quite an accomplishment when you consider the complexity of these early stores. “When we started the process, we had 62 stores on the other system. We still have several of those stores to bring over, but we expect to exceed a hundred within the next one to two years with this platform.”

Now, Interform has the confidence to move forward with this migration and roll out their new solution to new and existing customers. Jason says, “Switching to AmeriCommerce by Cart.com has prevented us from losing customers, and we’ve got another half-dozen potential customers that have just been waiting for us to move platforms.”

“Thanks to Cart.com, we’re able to offer a more customized look, feel, and operation of their stores than most other competitors. Because most other competitors are using a generic platform that doesn’t give them the flexibility that Cart does.”

Puppy Cake introduces wholesale and finds their niche in the pet industry

2020-03-19T13:45:00-05:00

Kelly Costello founded Puppy Cake in August of 2017. Puppy Cake manufactures and sells cake and ice cream mixes for dogs. In three short years, Puppy Cake has leveraged e-commerce to grow to more than $2 million in sales in three short years. Puppy Cake manages two websites: a direct-to-consumer website, www.puppycake.com, and a wholesale site, wholesale.puppycake.com.

It Starts With A “Big Idea”

Puppy Cake began with an epiphany Kelly had while working on a marketing project for her previous employer. “I used to work for a sales and marketing firm and I was working for a client that made cake mixes for people. I was reviewing old cake mix ads and I was like, ‘Oh, wouldn’t it be great if someone would make these for dogs. People love their dogs,’ and that was my light bulb moment,” Kelly said. “'I can do that!' I thought". Kelly took her idea to Shark Tank and appeared on the show as a contestant. “I didn’t get a deal, but I got great publicity and some great advice,” she said about her experience on the entrepreneurship reality show. After trying and struggling with two other e-commerce platforms, Puppy Cake chose AmeriCommerce off the recommendation of a second Shark Tank contestant and friend that also uses the platform.

Kelly also leaned on her experience in the consumer packaged goods industry and how that industry leverages e-commerce to build brands. “Having come from the consumer packaged goods space -- that’s where most of my clients were from -- I knew that e-commerce was going to be critical for proof of concept and getting to the first $500k in sales. Direct to consumer sales are high profit margins and a lot easier to get than getting retail partners,” she said. “So right away, I knew I was going to do e-commerce.” Kelly’s dreams, however, included Puppy Cake products being featured in brick and mortar retail locations. “I knew that we were going to have to transition to be business-to-business. Having worked with Smuckers and Heinz, who were my clients at the time, that’s how they got to where they are by working with retail partners.”

The Biggest Mistake

Kelly’s experiences with other e-commerce platforms created pain points for Puppy Cake. The growth of the retail and wholesale websites revealed the limitations of both Volusion and SAP Anywhere as she searched for a solution to her business needs. “How can I have two separate websites and have them pull from the same inventory? Inventory was a huge problem for us,” she said. “How were my sales? Where were my sales? How many units was I selling from the wholesale site and how many units was I selling on the retail site? I was completely blind, and Volusion offered no ways of doing that.” Enter SAP Anywhere, who sold her on the ability to solve her issues.

SAP Anywhere was the “worst business decision of 2018,” Kelly said. The platform sunset on its customers with little to no warning. “The on-boarding process was really awful. I paid a lot of money up front and the monthly costs were around $350,” Kelly said. “My on-boarding specialist was very professional but not very skilled at her job. When things would come up, it seemed technical support would take a long time to get to them.” Other red flags began to appear and Kelly inquired about the warning signs but never could get a straight answer from her account representative. Two months after going live, Kelly got the email that SAP Anywhere was sunsetting. “When you spend so much money on something you begin to think, ‘It has to be OK,’ because you’ve just gone so far instead of just cutting your losses,” she said. “That was a tough business lesson to learn.”

A helping hand...

Puppy Cake’s business model had significant business-to-business needs and the closure of SAP Anywhere forced the company to reset and re-evaluate e-commerce solutions. Puppy Cake looked to Volusion but found their B2B functionality was lacking. “Volusion wasn’t user friendly because of their inventory control,” Kelly said. Puppy Cake needed a solution that provided a front-facing retail website for the general public and a robust wholesale site with deep B2B functionality. Kelly also added to the mix the need for a single inventory tracking system that both sites could pull from, the need for protected logins, and easily accessible reporting at the product level. At a pivotal time in the company’s short history, Kelly turned to her Shark Tank friends for recommendations. “I found AmeriCommerce through one of my Shark Tank pals, Stefan Arstal. I was like, ‘OK guys, I need to have two separate websites: one that is direct to consumer and one that is business to business. They have to have to have logins, but I want them to pull from the same inventory. Is there anywhere that can happen?’ And that’s when Stefan said, ‘Yeah, I have AmeriCommerce.’” AmeriCommerce's exclusive multi-store tools and deep reporting functionality was exactly what Kelly was looking for.

Why AmeriCommerce was Right for Puppy Cake

Multi-Store Inventory Control

A self-hosted versus SaaS solution was less important for Kelly than finding the right product that met Puppy Cake’s business model. “For me, I was willing to spend a lot of money to get the right product,” Kelly said. “I needed to have a good solution to my pain points: a great business to business website; a good direct to consumer website; and they all have to pull from the same inventory. Inventory is such a big part of our business because our products are perishable. So we really have to focus on making sure we have the right counts. That was the most important thing for me and I would have paid quite a bit of money for it.”

Robust Data Reporting

Reporting is critical for Puppy Cake as well and Kelly noted that the reporting features in AmeriCommerce are essential to her operation. “Time is money,” she said. “I don’t have to spend time pulling reports from both of my sites and then try to have to put them together to make sense of them. It’s all in one place. When I’m travelling I can connect to the dashboard and quickly get to the information I need. I have the last 18 months of [year-over-year] sales on my dashboard so I can see how we are pacing. This helps me as a CEO understand what is going on in my business,” she said. Kelly added that the accessibility of quick data points like “Top Product by Sales,” “Top Customers,” and “Top Categories” helps her see the big picture and develop sales strategies. “I’m big on data. Data doesn’t lie. What’s selling is selling and you can’t fake that.”

Improve Operational Efficiency

Growing Puppy Cake was not just about increasing online sales. Kelly also wanted to find ways to improve operational efficiency. The ability to custom develop middle-ware using AmeriCommerce’s API allowed Kelly to tie her manufacturing resource planning software with her webstores. “I had a custom integration created that connects my AmeriCommerce orders with Katana MRP,” she noted. “I needed to have AmeriCommerce and Katana married, so I had a sync created that goes two ways: orders from AmeriCommerce will sync to Katana and then, when we make products in Katana, it can push inventory into AmeriCommerce. Because of this integration, I ended up saving tens of thousands of dollars because I no longer needed someone to sit there and calculate how much ingredients to buy.”

Platform Value

AmeriCommerce’s platform is saving Puppy Cake hundreds of dollars a month in several areas, Kelly added. “AmeriCommerce is so much easier to work with than what the other options are. It blows my mind that people use Shopify with how expensive it is and they take a percentage of their customer's sales.” Kelly noted that some of her larger wholesale orders are placed directly into the back-end of AmeriCommerce’s dashboard and these large wholesale orders could be subject to the “percent-of-sale” fees other platforms charge, increasing her costs tremendously.

It blows my mind that people use Shopify with how expensive it is and they take a percentage of their customer's sales.

Another area of savings Kelly mentioned revolved around payment gateway costs. “We also got good pricing with your payment services (AmeriCommerce Payments).” AmeriCommerce Payments is the online payments solution fully integrated into AmeriCommerce while powered by a third party payment processors. Kelly agreed that the savings reaped from her platform choice has allowed Puppy Cake to move money into other areas of business critical to their success including marketing, advertising and adding personnel.

Business to Business Functionality

When Puppy Cake started growing, Kelly saw the need for a platform that had more B2B functionality than what she had seen before. “We were struggling with Volusion. Our wholesale pricing is closely guarded. We needed password protected logins,” Kelly said. In addition, cake and ice cream mixes have a limited shelf life so Puppy Cake needed serious reporting functionality to ensure the products they were providing to both wholesale and retail customers were as fresh as they could be. Adding even more value to Puppy Cake’s growing B2B market is the shopping cart’s ease of use. “Probably 90 percent of our sales that hit on AmeriCommerce are business-to-business, so if it’s easy to use and it makes sense we can expect even more sales,” Kelly said.

Ability To Scale Economically

Puppy Cake saw tremendous growth in sales very quickly and she was able to do so without her costs skyrocketing. “Shopify gets people on and it’s cheap to start, but if you grow with them, watch out. Some of my Shark Tank friends that are doing $100k+ per month in sales and Shopify takes a percentage of that. They are paying Shopify thousands of dollars a month.” AmeriCommerce’s pricing structure is intentionally separate from website sales and firmly believes that selling more shouldn’t cost you more. “The pricing is really fair with the way it works on bandwidth,” Kelly said.

Making The Final Decision

After her experience with a sunsetting platform, Kelly wanted to make sure the e-commerce solution she chose was going to be around. AmeriCommerce was founded in 2005 and has thrived for 15 years. “The reputation of the company was important to me. I wanted to know who I got married to was going to be around a while,” she said. “Entrepreneurs will fight a lot harder than a large company will for their business.”

Here's just some of the major accomplishments from Puppy Cake so far:

Puppy Cake Peanut Butter is the 2nd best-selling cake mix on Amazon, beating out all but 1 cake mix for people.
Launching the Puppy Scoops Ice Cream doubled the business over night.
Puppy Scoops Ice Cream Mix received 2^nd Place in the "New Product Showcase-Natural Pet" at the Global Pet Expo in 2015.
Carob Chip Cookie Mix won the "New Product Showcase-Natural Pet" at the Global Pet Expo in 2014.
Puppy Cake appeared on Shark Tank - Season 3.
Won "Best in Show" at Global Pet Expo in 2018.

Advice for others starting in ecommerce?

Brand recognition is less important than the product that solves a customer’s problem, according to Kelly. “I see a lot of young entrepreneurs trying to lead with their brand. No one knows your brand. What are you offering? Be the solution to a Google search,” Kelly said. “If you are the solution to a google search and you have a good product that matches that, you will make money with ecommerce.”

Kelly's recommendation

“I recommend AmeriCommerce on a regular basis because you can actually grow your business with the platform. You can start with a small company with just two SKUs like I did, and grow it to a company with 150 or more SKUs,” Kelly said.

How one brand is putting people over profits while selling online

2020-03-17T16:12:00-05:00

Jan Dunlop of theClickLab serves as webmaster for Pure Fiji and has led the company’s internet commerce efforts for over 20 years. With websites uniquely designed for seven different countries, Pure Fiji’s powerful story of socially responsible and environmentally mindful growth shows the impact an e-commerce company can have on an entire nation.

How it all began

A mom, a daughter, a table, and a dream.

Gaetane Austin founded Pure Fiji at her kitchen table in 1996 along with her daughter and co-owner Andree, according to Jan Dunlop who also serves as a family friend of the Austins. “Andree had a flair for product design and Gaetane had a good business background.” They put their heads together and started a company that focused on making award winning soap products for the local market before expanding to manufacture lotions and oils. Pure Fiji now offers a full line of all-natural bath and body care products in an environmentally friendly and responsible way.

Focus on Community

Pure Fiji takes corporate social responsibility seriously and has embedded this passion into every aspect of its operations on the South Pacific island nation. Sustainable development is a core value that is having a positive impact on the social, economic and environmental conditions for the Fiji Islands.

Social

Pure Fiji takes a leading role in affecting social change on the island. Decisions are not made solely on its impact on the company’s bottom line, but also its impact on the island’s residents. Jan shared this story:

“A lot of their products are wrapped in a hand-made, beautiful paper which is really pretty and has flowers embedded in it. There is one remote village on the island that makes that paper. They make about 4,000 sheets a week that they sell to Pure Fiji. It has enabled that village to keep all their young people in the village and it has even helped them build a school there.”

Instead of outsourcing the manufacture of this paper to a large vendor who could mass produce and then discount bulk orders, Pure Fiji has made the decision to invest locally and empower an entire village to grow with it. The company is willing to spend extra money in order to support families and communities on the islands.

Economic

Similarly, Pure Fiji’s desire to build the island nation’s economy includes making decisions that put people over profit. “Pure Fiji had a product-filling line they used to use, but then decided to retire it and hire people instead. In Fiji, one family member will usually support quite a large family so if you can employ another person, you are supporting another whole family,” Jan said. Pure Fiji now employs hundreds of people, especially in the outer villages.

Environmental

Pure Fiji’s products are not only all-natural, the entire manufacturing process is environmentally friendly. According to Jan, raw ingredients for products are wild-harvested - which reduces the need for artificial irrigation, fertilization and pesticides, thus reducing the impact on the local ecosystem and maintaining sustainability. Oils are cold-pressed and botanical ingredients are “wild-crafted” -- harvested respectfully in their natural habitat while taking care to remove only what is necessary at that time. In a business world that chases fast-paced production and the largest profit margin, Pure Fiji stays true to a focus on processes that ensure the highest possible product quality.

Choosing Ecommerce

An early player in ecommerce during the 1990s, when ecommerce was in its infancy, Pure Fiji settled on Miva Merchant because the company knew it wanted to run multiple stores on the platform. “The multi-store question was there from day one because the company wanted a webstore for Fiji and a webstore for the United States,” Jan said. “We went with Miva Merchant for many years and stuck with them because I really couldn’t find anything else. It was very structured and hard to really do anything outside of the box.”

AmeriCommerce launched in 2005 and answered a lot of questions Jan had while investigating e-commerce platform alternatives. “We saw the need to have a more flexible platform and that’s when we came across you guys. With our number of products and our number of variants, we couldn’t use Miva. It was a nightmare,” he said. In addition, “They weren't developing out certain features because I believe they were worried they might chop off some of their revenue from their plug-in providers.”

Why AmeriCommerce was Right for Pure Fiji

When migrating from one platform to another there can be potential unknowns. As Pure Fiji’s web master, Jan had his work cut out for him in choosing the right platform for his client and close friends. “I knew we were going to need a lot of hand-holding,” he said. “I could see there were a couple of other providers that looked really good on the surface. But when I dug deep into their support tickets and what people were complaining about, there was a lot of, ‘These guys never get back to us,’ remarks. I signed up for trials on four platforms and sent a support request to each one just to test response time and response quality. You guys nailed it there.”

Self-hosted vs. SaaS

An early question many entrepreneurs and managers of e-commerce websites face is deciding on a self-hosted or software-as-a-service platform. Jan researched Magento, a self-hosted platform, and said, “We looked at Magento and I have a friend who runs a Magento site. He has to look after his site and it’s complicated. It’s hard to manage and then there are security issues. The ability for AmeriCommerce (a SaaS platform) to just look after it for us was key in making the decision.”

Geographically- and Currency-based Multi Stores

Looking to expand through contacts in the United States, Pure Fiji was able to get into the spa industry and become a premium spa brand. From there, the company pursued distributors in other countries. Now, the Fiji Islands, Australia, New Zealand, Czech Republic, Korea, the United Kingdom, and the United States are all countries where Pure Fiji can do business because of AmeriCommerce’s multi-store feature. Pure Fiji’s unique use-case for multi-stores based on country allows the company to do business internationally in the country’s own currency while also delivering unique front-end experiences per storefront.

Improve Operational Efficiency

The multi-store feature also helped Pure Fiji improve efficiency by centralizing the product catalog and inventory systems for all stores. “One of the features we rely on the most is product cloning and sharing resources like images across all the stores,” Jan said. AmeriCommerce also eliminated the need for the corporate headquarters to run additional processes to reconcile inventory reports. “They were managing inventory with Quickbooks and then exporting to a spreadsheet and they were asking, ‘How can we get Quickbooks to talk to AmeriCommerce?’ And I was like, ‘Why don’t you just use AmeriCommerce? You can create invoices, print invoices and create quotes. Now, the company doesn’t even use its in-house system anymore. All order processing happens via AmeriCommerce,” Jan said.

...And I was like, ‘Why don’t you just use AmeriCommerce? You can create invoices, print invoices and create quotes. Now, the company doesn’t even use its in-house system anymore.

Platform Integrations and API Access

Pure Fiji’s US distributor uses the Avalara integration while Australia was able to develop a custom inventory system that utilizes the AmeriCommerce API. The Fiji Islands’ government is requiring all locally-based companies to submit all business invoices electronically. “Because of the API, we have the ability to develop a program to pull these invoices and send them to the government,” Jan said. Thankfully, this feature comes standard out of the box for any AmeriCommerce customers that may be launching international online storefronts.

Ability To Compete Economically

Despite Pure Fiji’s small stature as a company on a global level, Jan feels AmeriCommerce gives them a slightly more level playing field. “Pure Fiji is considered a premium spa brand like Dermalogica and other large companies that may have hundreds of employees in their e-commerce department. What AmeriCommerce has allowed us to do is compete at a similar level as some of these huge brands.”

Advice for others

“Don’t skimp,” Jan said. “Don’t just pick some super cheap e-commerce platform if you want to grow your business because you are going to hit limits very quickly. Choose a platform that can handle the growth that you want.”