Dhall and Nash doubles in size with its Brightpearl operational hub

The background

Dhall and Nash started 10 years ago with a vision to source the finest wines around the world for New Zealand. The founding partners, Puneet Dhall and Brandon Nash, met 20 years ago as budding wine makers in New Zealand.

They became friends and after some work ventures where Puneet Dhall had been working for the top wine brokerages in London and Brandon Nash had been working for some of the top wineries in New Zealand, came to the idea of starting what is now Dhall and Nash Fine Wines from the bottom up.

As B2B wine distributors, they are selling to a variety of different industries including restaurants, resorts and airlines. When Dhall and Nash made the decision to implement Brightpearl, there was a lot of stress leading up to the transition, but Brightpearl provided constant support through the whole process and made it manageable.

“We had a very successful transition 5 years ago. Having the Brightpearl team available and helping to bring everything over into the platform without disrupting our business was so helpful. Just the thought was so stressful, but the Brightpearl team helped make the transition seamless.”

The challenge

Dhall and Nash used spreadsheets in the beginning, but within a year, they were already growing revenue and inventory, so spreadsheets were starting to become a real problem as they were trying to scale.

Their first piece of software was MYOB, but after using them for a couple of years, in conjunction with several different parallel systems, they soon realized that they had again outgrown their operational systems.

By year five, they were running around $5-6 million in revenue and up to around 1000 SKUs with a team of 15 employees. Once they signed one of their biggest clients, they started to look at a more robust ERP system, because they were running 50+ sales a day and couldn’t handle the increased volume of SKUs.

Puneet mentioned during this high growth phase that they were very stressed and did not have the operational systems to support them: “We were losing control. The wheels had fallen off. It was time to look at something new.”

The systems they had in place couldn’t handle the large order volumes and increasing volume of SKUs that were being added as the business grew. Ordering is unique for this industry because the year of a wine varies on the product, so year-over-year history is not as valuable due to the year corresponding to the wine product. Therefore, SKUs for inventory for their increased wine products was becoming a huge problem.

With Brightpearl, they stopped having stockouts and saved more money because they were ordering correctly and more efficiently. “Our suppliers liked us better because we were paying them better, so then they started giving us discounts, and then giving us better product and recommending us to bigger and better brands. So it became a great snowball effect, and we just continued to grow because we had a better view into our business.”

Five years ago, Dhall and Nash were operating at $4.5m and within the first two years of using Brightpearl, they more than doubled; hitting $10m. “We had an acceleration with Brightpearl, which caused some stress because we had more than doubled in only two years, causing us to spend more money to keep up. But Brightpearl was scaling all on its own. It was taking on the order volume, making the necessary workflows and housing it all in one place. We doubled in size as a company in two years due to Brightpearl.”

They continue to grow 5 years after implementing Brightpearl. They now come head-to-head with other retailers who are using major ERP systems that can’t keep up with the same view of their inventory and stock. As a result, “We end up winning these deals because we have a better picture of our retail inventory management.”

Key Challenges:

• Inventory and order management
• No single operational hub, with lack of reporting
• Sales workflows and lag in work time to complete sales

The solution

With Brightpearl, after only 3 months of implementation time, Dhall and Nash were able to really scale their business: “We doubled in revenue within the first two years of using Brightpearl.” Brightpearl became their source of truth and visibility, connecting all of their different operations, and scaling on its own.

“We use almost every aspect of Brightpearl to some degree.” Their sales team uses contact cards and timelines, email, and project management all through Brightpearl. With the email marketing feature, they are now able to scale their outreach to make sure that people are getting the attention they need and to grow their new brands. “I tell my sales guys I want to touch every customer at least once a month. And because of Brightpearl, we are doing it very well. Timelines and sales records are at the drop of their hands when they meet with their clients and with our internal teams – we wouldn’t have doubled our business in two years if the customers hadn’t noticed the efficiency and personalized touch.”

Dhall and Nash recognize that Brightpearl is built with retailers and wholesalers in mind. “For our industry, the customizable fields are key. We have hundreds of custom fields. Things such as altitude, tasting notes, alkanes, and production year that are very unique to the wine industry – and then that feeds into our website integrations that we are building as we grow into different sectors as well.”

Key Strengths:

• Custom fields and workflows
• One operational hub
• Better forecasting due to Brightpearl’s inventory management features
• Support for both best practices and product integrations

The future

Dhall and Nash continue to grow and their next venture will be exploring the private B2C sector, building their ecommerce engines, and expanding internationally. Brightpearl is a huge piece of this expansion, as their business is built on the workflows and operations of the platform. Almost every employee, in all the different departments, has a Brightpearl user license.

In the next 5 years, they are looking at companies to buy, and their experience with Brightpearl allows them to know what to look for with their operational efficiency.

“As we grow, cash flow will be a focus, so having software like Brightpearl be able to give measures and help establish KPIs is tremendously helpful.”

www.dnfinewine.com