Baby & Co Strolls To Success After Super Speedy Brightpearl Delivery

We did our homework and looked at lots of other providers, but they all came up short compared to Brightpearl – Jeff Mills, Director, Baby & Co

When it comes to business, growth is always good – but it also introduces layers of complexity, and shines an unforgiving light on operational inefficiencies. 

It’s often when brands begin to feel the impact of this shift that they look for a back office solution to help simplify, streamline and automate operations, so they can continue to grow. 

That was the case for upmarket nursery brand Baby & Co, which joined the Brightpearl family in 2019. 

Growing pains

The family-run, Bristol-based company, established in 1982, specializes in strollers, prams, nursery furniture and nursery equipment from premium brands including Bugaboo, Silver Cross and Mamas & Papas. The DTC business, which has a webstore powered by Advanced Shopify, came to Brightpearl after growing by 40% year-on-year and ending up bogged down by manual processes. 

“We did our homework and looked at lots of other providers, but they all came up short compared to Brightpearl,” said Baby & Co’s Director, Jeff Mills. 

“It became clear that many systems weren’t built for the retail sector and, with the exception of Brightpearl, they all faltered when we hypothetically tested them with certain scenarios.

“We needed a flexible, scalable solution that could help us automate and streamline. Brightpearl ticked every box and more – we particularly loved that it could integrate ‘off the shelf’ with our Shopify website, that was a real attraction for us.”

Baby & Co was smart to steer clear of ‘alternative’ solutions, such as traditional ERPs. These dated systems take an average of 420 painfully long days to implement, often cost up to four times the initial quote and yet still fail in up to 75% of cases (often due to the process being managed by resellers rather than retail experts).

Brightpearl, as a flexible Retail Operating System (ROS), does things differently – and it shows. Implementation takes 110 days on average and is managed by retail experts from start to finish, resulting in an industry-leading success rate of 97%. 

Baby & Co, which has a long-established high street store plus a growing online presence, needed a new system to cope with the challenges of having stock across multiple locations and to eliminate the enormous administrative headache of having to manually add all sales and customer data. The business also needed its new system up and running in just six weeks, ahead of HMRC’s ‘Making Tax Digital’ deadline. 

“We were extremely ambitious with our implementation timeline, but the team at Brightpearl rose to the challenge and made it happen,” Jeff added. 

“It ended up being super rapid – taking less than 40 days to go live, which I was thrilled about. Having a dedicated Brightpearl team to implement and optimize the system made all the difference.

“Immediately, we began to feel the benefits – we love that the system connects ‘out of the box’ to so many other tools and apps, including our Advanced Shopify webstore and 3PL providers. 

“Brightpearl also has an open API and it’s committed to constantly adding cutting-edge retail functionality, which was important to us because we don’t want to continually have to invest in new integrations. We want a system that can grow as we do, so it suits our business today and in five or 10 years time.”

Putting manual processes to bed

As well as having instant access to a huge library of Plug & Play integrations, Baby & Co has benefited from the whole range of dedicated Brightpearl functionality, including real-time reporting, integrated accounting and, a particular highlight for Baby & Co, the powerful Automation Engine.

“We were previously spending huge amounts of time on tedious manual workflows, such as keying in address data, creating invoices and POs, and updating systems,” admitted Jeff. 

“When things were quiet, we could just about keep up with the manual tasks. But when orders spiked, such as after Black Friday, we’d have to spend days working late just to key in the sales data from one day. It was crazy, and totally unsustainable. 

“Now, thanks to Brightpearl, most of our workflows are automated and everything is synced so that we can get a real-time overview of the business at any time. It means we’re able to take a very hands-off approach to everything from managing inventory to order fulfillment. 

“I’d say automation saves us two members of full time staff – or around 70 hours a week – and it eliminates human error too.”

The real time transfer of data between key pillars of Baby & Co’s tech stack, made possible by Brightpearl, has also proven to be a game changer. 

With Shopify connected seamlessly to Brightpearl, which connects and communicates automatically with the brand’s 3PL providers, the majority of Baby & Co’s orders never even have to be touched, freeing up key staff to focus on the business’s goals and long term growth.

“We were extremely ambitious with our implementation timeline, but the team at Brightpearl rose to the challenge and made it happen” – Jeff Mills, Director, Baby & Co

Despite facing supply chain issues and rising prices, Baby & Co is confident about continued growth and delivering on its reputation for providing a personalized shopping experience for parents-to-be in Bristol, and beyond. 

Jeff added: “We’re excited about the future. And although there’s lots of uncertainty in retail right now, we’ll certainly never go back to doing business without Brightpearl.”