Casey’s Distributing efficiently distributes to over 2000 U.S. retailers with Brightpearl and BigCommerce

The background

Casey’s Distributing, Inc. distributes sports league licensed products to over 2000 retailers across the United States. The B2B company sells non-apparel products covering anything from lanyards to pendants, clocks to mugs, tumblers to trash cans, and stationery to dinner sets.

The wide variety of products are branded with sports teams from all the major U.S. leagues such as the NFL, NBA, NCAA, NHL, MLB and MLS. If you’re a fan of American Football, Basketball, Hockey, Baseball or Soccer, it’s likely that you’ve come across the Casey’s Distributing products through one retailer or another.

The business was founded 27 years ago with an original focus on selling baseball cards. However, the product range expanded when retailers began asking them for more and more products. Today, Casey’s Distributing sells over 40,000 products to thousands of U.S. retailers.

Casey’s Distributing is based in two locations in the U.S. with their head offices in Omaha, Nebraska and second base in Columbus, Ohio. They also operate from two warehouses and employ up to 45 employees during their peak holiday season and around 30 staff members at any other given time. The B2B business primarily sells online through their BigCommerce webstore, phone orders and electronic distribution.

The challenge

Casey’s Distributing started looking for an inventory management system when tasks became too monotonous due to the lack of automation in the previous software. Vice President of Operations, Ben Johnson explains: “Before Brightpearl, we were not able to automate the flow of orders from BigCommerce to our previous software. We had to manually enter data into our previous software and importing in bulk wasn’t very easy.”

Key Challenges:

• Manual data entry into the system

• Lack of integrations with BigCommerce

• Too much time spent on purchasing

The business struggled with efficiently purchasing the right products as they found it very difficult to see which products were selling and which were not. Ben shared: “The order points weren’t very easy to work with. Reordering products took up way too much time as there was much more analysis involved.”

When they began the search for a suitable retail management system, they considered NetSuite, StitchLabs, Fishbowl, and many more. In 2015, Casey’s Distributing decided Brightpearl was the best fit to help manage their wholesale business due to the “openness of the Brightpearl team to work together and understand our business needs.”

The solution

The majority of the Casey’s Distributing team use Brightpearl – from sales to marketing, and accounting to management. Ben says: “I’m our champion of the software, I teach people to use Brightpearl internally. Brightpearl is intuitive, easy to use and simple to train people on.

Ben adds: “I mainly use the system for reports, product management, orders and customers. I love the tagging functionality, it’s easy to tag and categorize products. I’m a numbers type of user so being able to see reports and numbers in the system is important to me.”

Casey’s Distributing has an impressive technology stack and takes full advantage of Brightpearl’s integrations by seamlessly using BigCommerce, Brightpearl and ShipStation. Ben explains: “Brightpearl automatically sends orders out to ShipStation to process the shipping, and the tracking number comes back into Brightpearl. It’s a very good inventory management software with connections to shipping software like ShipStation that can make your business better.”

Key Strengths:

• Cloud-based access and connectivity

• Ease of use with the software and integrations

• A myriad of connectors and integrations

• Open API and webhooks

Ben Johnson explains how they’ve become more efficient and saved time: “Brightpearl has definitely saved us time, we need less staff to do the same jobs as before. It also clarifies what we should purchase by giving us better visibility on the products that are selling and those that are not.”

As a wholesale business, it’s very important for Casey’s Distributing to be selling the right products. Ben shares how Brightpearl has helped with purchasing: “I like using Brightpearl to help retailers. If they need something on their shelf, we need to have it in stock and Brightpearl helps us do that. We’ve definitely made our money back on the investment in Brightpearl. We’ve certainly saved in expenses and made better decisions as a result of Brightpearl.”

Casey’s Distributing finds it easier to manage customer relationships since using Brightpearl and its online portal: “The portal has been really wonderful as customers can go check the status of their orders without emailing or calling. Our customers and sales representatives love the portal.”

The future

When Ben was asked what he loves most about running the Casey’s Distributing business, he shared: “We’re unique in the fact that we’re a wholesaler, but we serve many retailers, so we have to understand retail very well. Because we distribute, our whole key to success is buying and stocking the right products that are going to be in demand. I love trying to figure out that secret sauce of which products to move, which products to sell, what the hot products are going to be, and what our customers need.”

After 27 years of running the business, Casey’s Distributing still achieves a 10% growth rate year-over-year, setting them up for a long-lasting and bright future ahead.

www.caseys-distributing.com