Fuelling efficiency for furniture frontrunner
Basil Karam, co-founder of thriving furniture and homewares company, Life Interiors, shares his insights about business growth and success
Business success stories: Life Interiors
Founders
Basil and Geoffrey Karam
Location
Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane
Industry
Wholesale and retail: furniture
Modern furniture wholesaler and retailer, Life Interiors, is the epitome of a fast-growing business. Starting out of a suburban shed, Life Interiors is now a national success story, with expansive showrooms, wholesale, online and retail channels, and even international franchises in the works.
According to co-founder and CEO Basil Karam, this growth was all made possible by starting with the JCurve ERP edition of NetSuite. “JCurve ERP lets us run an efficient business,” says Basil, “and an efficient business means we can sell great products at a really affordable price.”
Life Interiors has since scaled up to a NetSuite edition to support its continued business growth.
Life Interiors’ management
software requirements:
Cloud-based
Scalable with a pathway to grow
Ability to manage wholesale, in-store and online customers
Capacity to handle thousands of monthly transactions
Advanced inventory functionality
Centralised view of the business
“I honestly believe that if we didn’t implement JCurve ERP in the early stages, we wouldn’t be in business today. JCurve ERP is part of the fabric of our business.”
Why JCurve ERP?
With 5000 SKUs and more than 100 local and international suppliers, Life Interiors needed an extremely flexible and scalable business solution to manage their rapid growth.
As a former CTO and CIO, Basil knew exactly what to look for in business management software.
“I reviewed the marketplace very thoroughly,” says Basil. “The JCurve ERP solution was ideal. It was cost effective and had advanced inventory management capabilities.
“We were looking for a holistic, full-service solution, and one that was cloud-based and low maintenance.”
JCurve ERP has allowed us to build a business that could grow across multiple channels such as retail and online, and to do it with minimal effort.
The growth pathway to NetSuite
Another reason Life Interiors chose JCurve ERP was the scalability of the software.
“We knew JCurve ERP was the small business edition of NetSuite; we knew we would have a path to grow.
“We started with just a few licenses as one of the first JCurve ERP customers and we’re now at the upper limit, with 20 users. We have since scaled up to the NetSuite wholesale distribution edition.”
Everything is cloud based
Life Interiors also makes full use of JCurve ERP’s cloud technology.
“We run our entire business in the cloud – including JCurve ERP, file management and email,” Basil explains.
“Many of our employees work remotely, including our accounts team. JCurve ERP allows everyone to login from anywhere and be productive straight away.”
Dashboards at your fingertips
Basil keeps track of his KPIs on his phone and tablet so he can always see what’s going on within the business.
“JCurve ERP gives us that all-important central view of the business. It’s all at our fingertips,” explains Basil
“The dashboards help us see areas that are performing well. We can easily see the performance of our inventory and slow moving stock, as well as opportunities where we’re out of stock of fast moving items.
“For Finance, we can quickly see our profit and loss and ensure product profitability is maintained across all product ranges”.
Plus, with multiple offices, Life Interiors set up reporting in JCurve ERP and NetSuite to drill down into each location.
Rapid growth
“We work with 100 local suppliers and 5,000 SKUs – and that’s only going to increase over next 12 months as we expand internationally,” says Basil.
Supplier and wholesale transparency
“We provide products to some of Australia’s leading online retailers such as Temple & Webster, Zanui and Home Depot.
“We’ve automated delivery of stock levels to several partners at once, ensuring transparency and efficient management of stock levels across multiple entities. We’ve also automated the invoicing and order placement process so we’re easy to do business with. It’s allowed us to develop strong strategic business partnerships and improve our repeat business sales,” Basil says.
How JCurve ERP has helped Life Interiors grow
“JCurve ERP allowed us to move quickly and fast,” says Basil.
“A single team member can make a change and it’s instantly reflected across the whole business. There’s no bottleneck slowing us down.”
Information and resources
eBook
Free eBook: The Ultimate Guide to Inventory Management.
Video
2-minute explainer video: What Is ERP Software?
Blog
ERP blog: see the latest ideas on improving business performance.
Whitepaper
Free whitepaper: The Small Business Growth Playbook.
Why consider JCurve ERP for your small business software?
Find out in this brief explainer video.
One system
For SMBs and growing businesses, being able to leverage a streamlined ERP system that uses best-practice business processes is invaluable. Make more informed, agile business decisions with real-time information that’s accessible from wherever you are. See increased process efficiency. Set your business up to see real growth.
All core business needs
JCurve Solutions are the exclusive provider of JCurve ERP, the small business edition of NetSuite. JCS has completed over 600 successful cloud ERP implementations and counting. Backed by a local, Australian-based team, JCS takes the time to understand your specific business needs and provide the advice and support to get you running with your ERP software faster.
Want to be one of the next business success stories?
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Book a demo or call us on 1800 528 783
