Introduction
Different Drop is a premium Australian wine and spirits online retailer and wholesaler, based in Ultimo, NSW. Founded in 2013 by “three mates”, the company delivers personalised service and hard-to-find products to its customers, including rare vintage and limited-edition wines. Different Drop’s customer base includes premium and boutique wine consumers, corporate offices, and restaurants.
Why did Different Drop choose JCurve ERP?
Different Drop started out using Xero but it was too limited for the company’s complex inventory and order management needs. The software lacked a cost-of-goods-sold account and functionality to manage stock in and out – both from a warehousing and an accounting perspective.
“As a retailer, we’re very inventory-heavy, and we quickly ran into barriers to what we could achieve. In a business like ours, where the major asset or risk is the stock, we needed a platform that could manage that,” explains Brett Ketelbey, Co-Founder/Director, Different Drop.
Despite being a startup, Brett wanted to achieve what the top companies in the sector were doing. So, he researched industry leaders and noticed they were all using technology involving NetSuite, the global #1 ERP software suite. Despite being beyond Different Drop’s budget, Brett made an inquiry with NetSuite, and was put in touch with JCurve Solutions (ASX: JCS), who supply an exclusive small business edition of NetSuite, “JCurve ERP”.
< "For a business like ours, cash flow is the thing that will sink you. JCurve ERP has enabled us to stay on top of that, and really manage our stock turn rates to stay cash flow positive."
Instant benefits and seamless scaling
During the initial setup, Brett and his business partners worked closely with the JCS implementation team to thoroughly understand how the system would work. They were surprised with how quickly they began seeing benefits.
“We saw the benefits almost immediately, within the first month or two, and it was very easy to use,” Brett says.
Different Drop has since enjoyed impressive time and cost savings in reducing the admin and manual workload requirements that resulted from using JCurve ERP. The company’s managers use dashboards, saved searches and reporting on a daily basis to manage inventory, orders, customers, accounts payable, and more.
“You can create dynamic reports and lists, such as ‘what stock do we need to purchase?’. You only need to build this once, then you can access it whenever you want, which was extremely helpful. Previously this was a manual process, and very time intensive,” Brett says.
“For a business like ours, cash flow is the thing that will sink you. JCurve ERP has enabled us to stay on top of that, and really manage our stock turn rates to stay cash flow positive.”
Since deploying JCurve ERP, Different Drop has enjoyed stellar growth. Its customer base has expanded from a few hundred to tens of thousands of members, and JCurve ERP has allowed the company to scale quickly
“JCurve ERP allows us to do a lot more with a very small headcount. It’s enabled us to reduce the administrative burden of a business with a lot of moving parts.”
Different Drop now sells around 2,000 products and has grown from two people working out of a garage to a warehouse of five. For Brett, the upgrade of locations couldn’t have come soon enough: “We were in my mother’s garage, which was an overhanging garage with a cavity underneath. I worked out we had 10 tonnes of wine on the slab there, and it would soon crack, so we had to get to a warehouse pretty quickly!”
JCurve ERP’s reporting functionality has been critical to Different Drop’s growth. Managers instantly know what’s in stock and can better understand inventory trends and make agile decisions.
“Thanks to JCurve ERP, we’ve identified some cool patterns. We’ve noticed that average volume per order has gone down, but average value per order has actually risen. We used to mainly ship dozen-unit boxes, but now it’s six packs. So, people are ordering more often and buying higher value wines,” Brett comments.
Lead management was also enhanced, thanks to JCurve ERP’s inbuilt CRM with its ability to fully track interactions in real-time and record customer notes.
Brett reflects on the remarkable business growth: “JCurve ERP enables us to do a lot more with a very small headcount. We deal with hundreds of vendors and thousands of customers, and we sell thousands of products. We have quite a large revenue now, and we do all that with just five guys on our payroll. I don’t think we could do that without
JCurve ERP. It has enabled us to reduce the administrative burden of a business with a lot of moving parts.”
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