petshop.co.uk
PetShop.co.uk Delivers Before Pets Growl
Growing up with several rabbits, hamsters, two dogs, seven cats and three sisters, Adam Taylor vividly remembers carrying some 26-pound bag of pet food weekly to his London home for the family pets. When the 2008 recession cost him a Lehman Brothers job and his wife her planned financial services role, Taylor reflected on his 12-year-old pet food-hauling self as he contemplated his next move. Despite a pet industry boom, he realised things hadn’t innovated all that much when it came to efficiently acquiring pet food.
Company: Petshop.co.uk
Location: Stratford-upon-avon
Industry: eCommerce
Other Solution Considered: SAP Business One
Systems Replaced: QuickBooks, BigCommerce, Mail Chimp
NetSuite Products Implemented: NetSuite OneWorld, SuiteCommerce Advanced, Bronto Marketing Platform
Implementation Partner: BlueBridge One
Location: Addlestone, Surrey, U.K.
“For a company like us, in a David versus Goliath situation with big competitors, we need to outmanoeuvre them using creative marketing and investing in our software capabilities.”
Adam Taylor
CEO and Founder, PetShop.co.uk
Bootstrapped and rapid growth pace
Fast forward two years, past interviews with hundreds of dog walkers on London streets, time in a Coventry incubator and personally delivering bags of food stored in their London flat, PetShop.co.uk, Taylor’s bootstrapped ecommerce pet food service company, was growing at 50 percent annually with 300,000 subscribers.
Competition demands new tricks
To disrupt the dated pet industry and beat established European players like Zooplus and Pets at Home, PetShop.co.uk needed to play to its own strengths and outmanoeuvre larger cumbersome competitors by delivering innovative customer experiences. But QuickBooks and BigCommerce ecommerce software didn’t integrate for data analysis, or enable customised ecommerce and personalised marketing that could scale.
Deliveries on target
NetSuite’s SuiteCommerce Advanced allows pet owners maximum convenience and savings to subscribe for weekly deliveries, providing a huge advantage and flexibility over Amazon’s monthly subscriptions. Orders are addressed to the pets, and personalised, dynamic emails provide relevant educational information to help pet parents, enabled through NetSuite and Bronto commerce marketing, have resulted in an above average email conversion rate of 14 percent. Meanwhile, the business hasn’t grown its staff of 20.
“Fur-sonalization:” the new personalisation
“Fur-sonalization:” the new personalisationIntegrating pet, item and order data, the company will soon be able to display recommendations on its checkout page tailored to the pet, as well as real-time product availability to drive deeply personalised, data-based communications and offers as it eyes international markets and the next stage of growth.