Brightpearl powers Evolve Beauty to operate completely in the cloud and reduce its carbon footprint

The background

Evolve Organic Beauty hand make small batches of organic skincare in their eco studio in Hertfordshire. The beauty products they make are more than 98% natural, as well as vegan and cruelty free. Laura Rudoe, the company’s CEO, began developing her eco-friendly range of products in November 2008 and launched them in October 2009.

She sells her beauty products through health food stores and online cosmetic retailers, as well as via her own Shopify website. Since launching the business on her own, it has grown rapidly. Now all products are made in house by a team of over 20 artisans with the company welcoming even more members in their marketing and sales teams.

Here, Laura tells us more about her story and how using Brightpearl’s retail operations software has helped to maintain and grow her business.

The challenge

Laura starts by saying: “Initially, I was working on Sage 50, but found that it was very restrictive. It did not give me the functionality to collaborate over the web. Working from home, I need the ability for my third party manufacturer who helps to produce my products, my accountant and a number of freelancers who help with product development, sales and PR, to be able to have visibility of all my business data. As things stood with Sage, if any of them needed access to anything, they would need to come to me and work on my computer. On top of travel time and cost, this meant that whilst others were using the system, I did not have access to the information that was imperative to letting me get on with running my business.”

Prior to implementing Brightpearl, Laura says: “I looked at a number of other business software packages to move to, including Salesorder, OpenERP and NetSuite. However, these were either too expensive to implement, had a bad reputation for customer support, or did not have as good an interface or import functionality as Brightpearl. So, I decided to give Brightpearl a try, and it has exceeded my expectations in terms of the collaboration I needed, as well as helping to make my business more efficient in ways I had not even imagined.”

Key Challenges:

• Gaining access to business data

• Lack of visibility across the business

• Keeping track of inventory

The solution

“Brightpearl was extremely easy and cost effective to implement. The import from Sage was quick and incredibly smooth, I was very impressed. Any questions I had, were answered quickly and competently by their friendly support team,” explains Laura. “The best thing about Brightpearl is that I can now operate entirely online. The ability to collaborate over the Internet means I don’t have to waste money hiring out office space, or on travel, and I save time by no longer having to share my system. Overall, this equates to my company being more green and cost effective. Plus, because Brightpearl is so incredibly intuitive and easy to use, I find it straightforward to train new users on the system.”

Laura continues: “Having the multi-warehouse functionality has helped me immensely. Most of my stock is managed externally but some will also sit with me, my freelancers or with the manufacturer. Being able to mark us as separate warehouse facilities means I can keep track of all of my stock – all of the time.”

“Another great feature of Brightpearl is that it allows me to do tasks in a batch. Customers can be tracked, tagged, emailed and updated in no time at all. This has streamlined my sales and lead generation by making it easy to communicate with current and potential clients, as well as with my suppliers. The reminders are very useful too; they help me to be more effective when it comes to both sales and PR.”

“At the same time as moving to Brightpearl, we decided to look at a new payment system. Brightpearl integrates with Sage Pay, which is an ideal solution. Sage Pay takes payments securely online for us and is a well trusted brand. It has even aided our online conversion rate. The Sage Pay integration itself is really easy and enables us to have even more information in the Brightpearl system, with less chance for mistakes and mix ups between different systems.”

The future

“Ultimately, Brightpearl has helped me to solve all the problems I was experiencing, plus a few I didn’t even know I had. My company is now more efficient, more organized and more environmentally friendly, without costing me the earth. I look forward to growing my business even further without having to worry about little things; I can concentrate on the bigger picture with Brightpearl,” concludes Laura.

www.evolvebeauty.co.uk