BigCommerce Dishes Out Tasty Results for Ollie Pets
Discover how customizable, cost-effective and reliable BigCommerce is and why we built it that way.
2016
founded as a business
2021
launched on BigCommerce
Multiple
meal plans sold via online subscription service
Performance metrics compare Aug. 26, 2019-Aug. 25, 2020 to Aug. 26, 2020-Aug. 26, 2021.
Pawsitively delicious
Ollie Pets has disrupted the dog food industry by prioritizing proper nutrition and the role it plays in the health and well-being of dogs.
Founded in 2016, Ollie Pets is a subscription-based service that delivers healthy, all-natural, human-grade dog food, supplements and treats straight to your front door. And the company has caught the attention of media giants like Forbes, TechCrunch, and Fortune.
CHALLENGE
Needing a way to scale
Ollie Pets is a digitally-native company that launched its business using a custom-built order management system. However, as sales began to pick up, the company quickly realized it would need a new ecommerce platform to keep up with the growing demand.
“As our company started to grow and our member base really started to take off, we knew we needed order management capabilities that integrated with our warehouse management system,” said Rachel Clark, principal product manager at Ollie Pets. “What we needed was a more mature platform to bolster order, offer and product taxonomy management as we expanded into multiple fulfillment centers and product lines.”
SOLUTION
Complex customizations made simple
For Ollie’s customers to take advantage of the site’s meal planning functionality, it required complex customization to recommend the right food plan based on different variables. BigCommerce’s headless architecture and Ollie’s in-house developers made it happen.
“Asking our old order management system to adapt and customize at that level of complexity didn't make a lot of sense for us, so that's why we went with the headless option,” Rachel said. “We needed to maintain complexity within our own systems, and then allow the order management system to do what it does best, which is just to focus on the actual order creation, updates, order management and fulfillment.”
Ollie leverages BigCommerce as its order management system and a Logiwa integration for warehouse management. The platform also enables Ollie to reconcile a customer’s order and status. And near real-time integrations allow for event tracking that triggers emails when orders are marked shipped or delivered. “This, in addition to analytical strategic analysis and reporting capabilities, is where BigCommerce significantly helps us out,” Rachel stated.
Within Ollie it’s not just developers who are hands-on with BigCommerce. The platform’s ease of use enables Ollie’s marketing team to manage promotions, its strategy team to manage pricing and its technical team to oversee feature deliveries.
Notable Applications:
Avalara is a sales tax automation tool.
Price List Importer/Exporter enables price list management and editing.
Technical Features:
Order Management System (OMS)
BigCommerce
Warehouse Management System (WMS)
Logiwa
Implementation Project Manager
Solutions Architect
Technical Account Manager
Customer Success Manager
“This, in addition to analytical strategic analysis and reporting capabilities, is where BigCommerce significantly helps us out.”
Rachel Clark Principal Product Manager, Ollie Pets
“BigCommerce gives us the ability to self-serve customization with its wealth of strategic plugin partnerships. If we decide to have alternate shopping opportunities, we know those partnerships will allow us to do it more efficiently.”
Rachel Clark Principal Product Manager, Ollie Pets
RESULTS
Performance and partnerships make the difference
Ollie sought an ecommerce platform with scalability and found it with BigCommerce. Through word-of-mouth and social media marketing with the likes of Facebook and Instagram, Ollie continues to grow in reach and revenue.
“BigCommerce gives us the ability to self-serve customization with its wealth of strategic plugin partnerships. If we decide to have alternate shopping opportunities, we know those partnerships will allow us to do it more efficiently,” said Rachel.
Today, Ollie has flexibility to scale in the future, and BigCommerce provides the pet food company more reliability in its subscription management functions and capabilities as well.
“What we needed was a more mature platform to bolster order, offer and product taxonomy management as we expanded into multiple fulfillment centers and product lines.”
Rachel Clark Principal Product Manager, Ollie Pets
LOOKING AHEAD
Expanding member benefits
It’s all about making things better for its customers. In July 2022, Ollie became a cross-channel seller when it launched its member app to make it easier for customers to manage their subscriptions. But it doesn’t stop there.
“Our focus is going to continue to be around improving the value of being an Ollie member. A lot of the investment is going to be how do we make subscription management as easy as possible for our members,” Rachel said. “The way we can offer the right thing to the right member at the right time is really going to be reliant upon our relationship with BigCommerce to execute some of the offer types we want to extend to our members.”
Published: December 2022
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