Best eCommerce Sites | A Little Lovely Company | Case Studies
Gained 133% Growth After Upgrade
A Little Lovely Company was founded in 2014 by Judith de Ruijter and Nikki Hateley, proud moms to seven children. The entrepreneurs wanted to transform kids’ bedrooms with unique and affordable decorations, such as wall decals, lighting, charms, and storage. The company didn’t stay little for long. Soon they had over 80 employees, operating in six countries through more than 4,200 retail outlets including Selfridges, Bonpoint, Printemps, El Corte Inglés, and MOMA — and two brick and mortar stores of their own.
In 2015, A Little Lovely Company implemented Magento Open Source as their commerce platform. They wanted to expand their capabilities and provide a better user experience in line with the company motto: “Making life lovely.” In 2016, after selling more than €425,000 ($500,000) of garlands, word banners, and lightboxes in just 24 hours, it became clear that A Little Lovely Company needed something bigger. In March 2017, they launched a new store on Magento Commerce. The upgrade was based on three key requirements: the ability to scale, manage their wholesale business, and expand globally — all at the same time.
We are glad to have Magento Commerce — it has everything we need today and I’m confident in their roadmap moving forward.
Jeroen Mars
Product Owner, A Little Lovely Company
To begin their digital transformation, A Little Lovely Company teamed up with the Enterprise Solution Partner, Guapa. Right out-of-the-box, Magento Commerce delivered the tools and functionality they needed for today’s commerce, and the future. Along with a visual redesign, the team focused on preparing all aspects of the site for growth, ensuring that new countries and currencies could be easily added as the company embarked on an ambitious global expansion.
With over 3,000 accounts, wholesale is the largest segment of the business, so the team agreed on a “B2B first” approach. Guapa adjusted their custom-built B2B modifications to the native Magento B2B functionalities, while upgrading to Magento Commerce 2.2. They easily integrated custom shipping options and their WICS order management and Exact ERP systems. Among the customizations to assist B2B account managers, is a color-coded order system, making it easier to track and follow-up on orders. Meanwhile, automatic daily email reminders inform sales-reps which customers have placed orders “on hold,” reducing cart abandonment, while making the sales process a little more lovely.
Through their retail partner program, A Little Lovely Company is inundated with applications from retailers wanting to carry their products (a rather lovely problem to have). The company accepts resellers from specific regions based on their location and analysis of buying patterns. They also require a minimum distance between retailers to avoid unnecessary competition. Tracking this in Magento is easy: the company can keep tabs on location, store sales, and buying patterns to make informed decisions on when and where to add additional reseller locations.
A Little Lovely Company is now a truly global business, with a web presence to match. After launching on Magento Commerce, the brand experienced a staggering +133 percent growth spurt. The performance and scalability of Magento, combined with solid servers on Amazon Web Services, was a must-have for the fast-growing company. On the back-end, automatic payment reminders, flagging of non-payment situations, and setting future orders to ‘pay in advance’ improved business efficiency, allowing the company to grow. Later in 2018, after some customization of the quote module, A Little Lovely Company plan to use the platform’s B2B capabilities to the fullest, and their next phase of growth involves global expansion.
Using Magento multistore capabilities, they’ll effortlessly launch new iterations of their store, and put smiles on kids faces in new, exciting regions.
Originally published at magento.com.
