“Arcturious were brilliant to work with, they were creative, they were engaged and they delivered above and beyond what we had expected. What started out as a simple plan for a CRM for sales has turned into the beating heart of our organisation, Salesforce and Arcturious will now become a very important part of our growth. We are beyond grateful for the work so far.” Adam Bouris | Head of Growth, who is elijah
About who is elijah
who is elijah is an independently owned fragrance house that produces gender-fluid scents that are cruelty-free and focused on sustainability. Established in 2018 by Creative Director Raquel Bouris to fill a gap in the market, they have been defying convention ever since. Due to their success, who is elijah has built a loyal customer base across Australia, New Zealand and the United States and have set their sites on becoming a global phenomenon.
Raquel has redefined the rule book & started a new chapter, changing the norm of the luxury fragrance world. Raquel was motivated to create gender-fluid scents, defying conventions & prioritised taking an ethical approach to fragrance & beauty, inspired by clean lines & modernity. What was once an idea coined during Raquel’s travels has created a seat at the table with some of the biggest names in the beauty industry.
Introduction
WHO IS ELIJAH, the brainchild of Raquel Bouris, has revolutionised the fragrance industry since its inception in 2018. Known for its gender-fluid scents, ethical production, and sustainable practices, the brand has emerged as a symbol of modern luxury. However, as demand surged, particularly in their wholesale division, the company's reliance on manual processes and disparate systems began hindering its operational efficiency and scalability.
Challenge
Despite the challenges of 2020, who is elijah experienced significant growth, which has included a focus on international shores to make their fragrances available in the US, Canada, and EU markets. This required the business to undertake an assessment of systems & processes in order to set themselves up for success in scaling both domestically and globally. The goal was to find a platform that would facilitate scalable & sustainable growth while empowering who is elijah to better manage both consumer and wholesale relationships across all of their target markets.
“We were really struggling with the management of our wholesale channel, orders, and inventory. That was the key trigger for us to say, okay, stop, what do we need to do here,” said Adam. “The business was still young and small, but I wanted to ensure we were ready to handle the volumes that would come through in the future.”
Their primary pain points were:
Manual processes and disconnected systems made fulfilling orders and managing inventory difficult for the operations team, leading to mistakes and inefficiencies.
Sales, operations and fulfilment forecasting had been inaccurate due to divergent systems and multiple sources of data, forcing the business to spend hours on pulling data from disconnected systems.
Driven by rapid growth in its wholesale division, who is elijah was beginning to struggle with the spreadsheets that had been used to manage wholesaler relationships and orders.
Double or triple entry of wholesale orders from emails to Xero and inconsistent use of inventory management tools
Our Solution and Approach
who is elijah first approached Arcturious looking to solve the problem of managing stockist relationships. Using a human-centred design methodology, we were able to dive deeper into their current processes and pain points while also exploring “blue sky thinking” to explore what the perfect future would look like. This exercise lead us to identify what the “real problem” was. Which turned out to be inventory management and order fulfilment across both their B2B and B2C channels. Taking the time to understand the business strategy and who is elijah’s aspirations really helped our joint teams architect a solution that was fit for purpose and would truly help the business scale.
"We set out to break the mould by leveraging an accelerator, built by the Arcturious team which combines Salesforce Field Service licences with pre-built process automation and custom Lightning Components to deliver a powerful inventory and order management solution." Michael Diamond | Director & Founder, Arcturious
Our 6-week engagement (yes, only 6 weeks!) brought together capabilities from Sales Cloud, Service Cloud, Salesforce Maps, DocuSign, Zapier, and the IDA Iconic to Shopify connector to thread together an end to end solution that allows who is elijah to effectively manage consumers, wholesalers, suppliers and influences from a single platform. Our solution even allows consumer revenue to be attributed influences giving who is elijah full transparency over how effective their influencer channels and discount codes are.
“There was a lot of time and effort put into the implementation, but it was a thoroughly enjoyable experience with a perfect outcome,” said Adam.“Salesforce has become the beating heart of our organisation. It drives our workflow and allows us to see all our customers, orders, inventory, influencers and suppliers in one place.”
Products and Partners
The Results
By using Salesforce and our consultative approach this project helped who is elijah realise the following benefits:
Total annual savings equivalent to 3 x initial investment
Scalable processes have supported a 500% increase in direct to consumer sales in just six months
Over $240,000 in savings each year, including an average savings of $6,000 per month as a result of increased accuracy in packing and shipping orders
Up to 2.5 hours saved daily on warehouse administration
Up to 2 hours saved per day on wholesaler onboarding
Streamlined Inventory and Order Management for both B2B and B2C
Integration with The Iconic and Shopify pushes B2C orders into Salesforce for fulfilment
Integration with Xero streamlines the B2B ordering and invoicing process and provides visibility of invoice payment status in Salesforce
BidFin was used as a way to allow the business to go ahead immediately. This also facilitated additional financial benefit by turning what would have been a significant Capex spend into a manageable monthly Opex expenditure.
“I didn’t realise the extent to which Salesforce could essentially stitch these different capabilities together, and that made it a really good choice for us in the end,” said Adam. “It was an investment for us as a small business, but it’s now saving us almost 3x what we put into it.”
If you are looking for help to solve a similar problem or would like to discuss working with Arcturious email us at info@arcturious.com or head back to our home page and fill in the contact us form.
Interested in reading more check out the Salesforce and Bidfin Case Studies below:
Don’t forget to also check out who is elijah to sample their scents! just in time for Christmas! Use the discount code Arcturious10 for a 10% discount: https://whoiselijah.com.au/