Bodysocks & BargainFox.com - Costume retailer pivots business model in just 6 weeks

Going Global

Founded in West Wales in 2011, Bodysocks is a global retailer of fancy dress attire and apparel, selling a wide range of costumes to over 70 countries across the world. From wacky piggyback suits to elaborate inflatable outfits, their unique costumes have gained huge recognition, having been featured on BBC 2’s Never Mind the Buzzcocks, Channel 5’s Big Brother and even the opening ceremony of the 2012 Olympic Games.

In the beginning, UK based Bodysocks was selling on Ebay, Amazon and through its website, managing each channel across a different stock system. However, as there was no real time software to keep the team updated on stock levels, duplicate sales became a major issue, leading to stock outs and unhappy customers. Fortunately, founder and director Jack Lear made the quick decision to get up and running on Brightpearl in order to resolve the issues.

Brightpearl immediately gave me the ability to synchronize inventory; it updated seamlessly in real time, fixing the stock issues we were having literally overnight. It removed the risk of overselling and helped us keep better control of our stock across all channels.

Once the inventory was synchronized across all channels, Brightpearl’s real time view ensured that Bodysocks weren’t blindsided by sudden spikes in demand, and no longer suffered with stock outs or duplicate sales. With Brightpearl’s automation powering shipping,  minimizing human error and saving Bodysocks more than an hour each day, this also freed up time for Jack and the senior team to focus on their impending global expansion.

Jack and the team were once again ahead of the curve, realizing the need for an accounting solution that could handle the international nature of the business and provide live financial reporting to enable fast purchasing decisions in a highly competitive marketplace.

“As we began to expand into international markets it quickly became apparent that we’d need to implement a program capable of handling overseas transactions. Brightpearl has been brilliant in the sense that it allows us to manage our client and supplier accounts in their local currency and gives us one simple system to track all of our financials, rather than monitoring  across different spreadsheets and softwares.”

Moving with the Market

The coronavirus pandemic has hit UK businesses hard, with close to 3,700 permanently closed. As the costume industry is predominantly built around supporting parties, fun runs and other group events, the ban on large gatherings has been detrimental to sales. This could have proven extremely problematic for Bodysocks, but once again, in March 2020 it had the foresight to diversify the business, setting up BargainFox.com as a one stop shop for discounted consumer goods.

With a new website, warehouse, and over 50,000 skus to manage, this could have been a lengthy process, but with Brightpearl at the heart of operations and Shopify’s ecommerce software powering their online store they were up and running in less than 6 weeks.

Thinking Big

With the success of Bodysocks and the immediate demand for the discounted consumer goods sold on BargainFox.com, Jack and his team are now looking to expand the BargainFox business to a global audience.

“We are a well regarded brand in the billion dollar costume business, and I’ve no doubt we’ll continue to grow our influence there, but our new venture in BargainFox.com opens up the multi trillion dollar industry of consumer goods to us, which is a really thrilling prospect.”

BargainFox.com will take advantage of Brightpearl’s demand planning software to understand exactly how its inventory is performing so it can invest in the areas of its business that will have the optimum impact on its growth. Not only that, but Brightpearl’s integrated warehouse management system will ensure that goods out and goods in processes are as efficiently run  as possible across multiple warehouse locations across the UK and in Pennsylvania in the US.

Speaking to how Brightpearl will tie into the firm’s future, Jack said “It’s a really exciting time for us as we take BargainFox.com global, and knowing that we have a reliable software that can grow with us and make us as efficient as possible means our expansion seems a lot less daunting.”

At a time where many businesses are feeling the effects of the pandemic, quick thinking and agile operations have turned crisis into opportunity for this Wales-based retailer that is taking on the world, one bargain at a time.