Vesternet are growing 50% year-on-year with Brightpearl

The background

Having already sold the world’s first Bluetooth ecommerce store in 1999, Dave Bell started looking for his next business venture. Word on the street was an emerging home automation technology was taking off, so Dave decided to try his hand at something new by starting a business to take this automation technology to market instead.

The products he was selling began to gain momentum and he officially set up Vesternet in 2008. Operating purely online, he is now the owner of the number one home automation ecommerce store in Europe.

Selling wireless home energy and security technology to customers and corporations, Vesternet has now been using Brightpearl to help manage their business for four years. They chose Brightpearl for its core functionality; accounting, CRM, inventory control and the ability to go multichannel.

Constantly looking to automate and streamline their business processes, Vesternet has also integrated with James and James Fulfilment, a warehousing company in the UK. Efficiency and automation are key to Vesternet’s operations; Dave tells us how he has achieved it.

The challenge

“Before Brightpearl, we were using NetSuite, which was really difficult to configure and manage. Every change was a complex task and a project in itself. Trying to do anything took way too long. Not one for wasting time, I began my search for software which would fit and suit my business better. I looked into a combination of Xero and an ecommerce package such as Shopify. But then I found Brightpearl, which had multiple core features in one system,” says Dave.

Dave continues: “The NetSuite web module simply wasn’t good enough. Brightpearl encouraged us to move over to Magento Community 1.7. At first, it was a hard sell, but looking back, it was one of the best things I have done for Vesternet. Our Magento store was built within two months, and it’s truly excellent. The range of plugins offered is amazing and most of these are free – they offer so much functionality and our customers are very impressed. The transition over to Magento was really smooth and the integration with Brightpearl is fantastic. Orders flow seamlessly from Magento to Brightpearl and the two-way communication is excellent.”

The solution

“Having ecommerce, accounting, CRM, inventory control, shipping and the ability to go multichannel in one place, I knew Brightpearl offered me an efficient, all-in-one solution,” starts Dave.

“An added bonus for our customers are the free resources and guides we offer – we are the only company in our market to do so. We like to set ourselves apart from our competitors by not being the cheapest, but by doing things better. We offer no ordinary ecommerce store; we educate, help, and inspire our customers with constant new innovations. We couldn’t do this without solid business processes in place, which Brightpearl has given us. My business is completely different now than from when I first started out. It’s no longer slap-dash and haphazard and I am no longer too busy to give good customer service. Now I can make it a priority of mine, I have the time to make my customers happy and build relationships with them. Customer service is now one of the things that distinguishes us from our competitors and we take it very seriously. A great way to see this working for us is through Trustpilot; customer reviews are very powerful for any business,” Dave tells us.

The future

Looking to the future, Dave says: “All members of our team have a chance to improve and excel at work. They are not tasked with doing gruelling manual operations or administration. Productivity within the company is much, much better. Automation means we no longer have to worry about the nuts and bolts of the business. Brightpearl does that for us! Everyone within the company uses it every day and they can access it anywhere at any time. Since making the decision to go with Brightpearl, I have never looked back. It is the most important tool in our business.”

www.vesternet.com