The last year has been a big year for multichannel retailing and all of us at Brightpearl. We’ve done everything possible to help retailers and wholesalers grow and succeed. From product updates to powerful new apps, improved insights to impressive infrastructure performance, Brightpearl has scaled massively in the past year.
We’re reminiscing on our top improvements from 2015 and taking a look at the bright future of what 2016 has in store for us…
2015: In review
Powerful New Apps
In 2015 we joined forces with some of the world’s leading software, including Alibaba.com,Shiptheory, STREAM and ReChannel, to create the key extensions our customers need to have the most efficient control over their sales channels and add extra functionality to their business.
Alibaba.com
In 2015, we collaborated with Alibaba.com and created an app which allows a merchant to source and create products on Alibaba.com right from within Brightpearl!
3 Key App Features:
- Easily source products directly from suppliers in China
- Discover new potential product lines and suppliers
- Save time by creating everything in Brightpearl
“Source from Alibaba.com offers our merchants access to thousands of products from a wide variety of suppliers. Our research has shown that in areas like apparel, consumer electronics, jewelry, beauty and personal care, Alibaba.com Wholesale supplier prices are typically up to 30 percent more cost effective.”
– Scott Hill, Product Manager at Brightpearl
Shiptheory
We teamed up with the cloud-based shipping platform, Shiptheory, to offer our UK customers the means to connect their business directly their carriers and automate shipping with flexible options.
3 Key App Features:
- Automatically process and create labels
- Configurable rules to automatically select the correct carrier and service for the order
- Ability to automatically embed shipping labels into your Brightpearl packing note templates
“Not only does this allow us to give our customers an instant tracking number, but it will save us hundreds of man hours over the year and make processing even more orders as simple as clicking a button…”
– Lee Adams, SpyCameraCCTV
STREAM
Delivery and transport management software, STREAM, also joined forces with Brightpearl. We created an app to integrate with STREAM to offer retailers or wholesales a complete end-to-end solution for businesses wanting to manage complex deliveries.
3 Key App Features:
- Improved customer satisfaction and customer interaction
- Reduced cost of the order-to-delivery life cycle
- Real-time management and tracking from order to final delivery
“We can now manage three times the volume of orders, STREAM gives us the ability to be 100% on top of our orders and deliveries with real-time data available quickly and efficiently. It has vastly improved our customer services and being honest I wouldn’t like to imagine Scandinavian House without STREAM.”
– Anne Ridgeway, Scandinavian House
ReChannel
We teamed up with ReChannel to allow brands to maximize their wholesale channel. ReChannel’s wholesale solution also allows you to take orders offline through an offline ordering app.
3 Key App Features:
- Expand reach by selling anywhere in the world
- Increase re-orders by marketing stock in real-time
- Cut the time spent managing orders by 50%
“As we rapidly grow, we were looking for a platform to help us scale improve our ordering, whilst also easily integrating with our systems – ReChannel has really helped us simplify our wholesale channel, so we can focus more on selling and expanding our business.”
– Adam Ward, Love Clothing
Find out more about all of our apps and integrations (there’s so many more than mentioned here!)visit our App Store.
Bigcommerce Integration is Bigger and Better!
We made our Bigcommerce connector bigger and better to allow merchants to extend the lifetime value of their Bigcommerce site. Orders are picked up as soon as they are created to help retailers maximize selling potential, minimize the risk of double selling and save time.
The key features of the Bigcommerce app include:
- Sync your orders, inventory and pricing updates with the rest of your business
- Connect multiple stores to Brightpearl, assigning each with their own stock, pricing and company branding
- Products are connected automatically by SKU, so no need to do so yourself!
- Import products from Bigcommerce into Brightpearl on demand
“One of the big deal-makers for us was Brightpearl’s integration with Bigcommerce and with marketplaces; eBay and Amazon. The multichannel integrations are really robust and not only that, the reporting is also very useful. We can see who is buying from which channel and all of our data is stored in one place and can be broken down to help us make informed business decisions.”
– Jack Otton, Racquet Sports Group
To find out more about the Bigcommerce app, visit our app store.
Ensure Accurate Profit Analysis with Landed Costs
calculatorWe made accurate profit analysis easier for retailers by launching landed costs in Q4 of 2015. As an essential part of supply chain management which can often be overlooked until later in the reporting process, we added the landed cost feature to ensure they are considered earlier in the supply chain. This in return allows retailers to ensure items will be profitable after import.
Here are the top four reasons why in-app landed costs can help SMBs to have even more control over their finances, sales and supply chain management:
- Accurately calculate profit on every item
- Ensure sales prices are profitable
- Analyze where savings can be made in the supply chain
- Correctly account for landed costs for accurate financial reports
To find out more about Landed Costs, read this blog on ‘What are Landed Costs and Why are they Important to your Business?’
Improved Cloud-Based Infrastructure
Our team of engineers worked hard to test and optimize the auto-scaling capabilities of Brightpearl’s cloud infrastructure to ensure retailers can deliver the best service during peak shopping periods.
“As Brightpearl is entirely cloud-based, we can dramatically increase computing resources to accommodate a huge spike in expected demand. The result is a competitive advantage enjoyed by the 1,400 merchants currently using Brightpearl to run their multi-channel operations.”
– Henry Morland, Chief Product Officer at Brightpearl.
All their hard work paid off after the staggering performance over the cyber weekend featuring Black Friday, Small Business Saturday and Cyber Monday. A whopping 4.5 million items were shipped using Brightpearl and 14,000 orders were processed per hour over the cyber weekend.
Not only did Brightpearl see impressive performance over the peak shopping periods, in the last two years:
- $4,382,932,062 USD worth of orders have been processed
- Orders have been bought from 46 different countries
- 40 different currencies have been used
Pretty impressive if I do say so myself!
Efficient Drop-shipping
Drop-shipping was made easier with our most advanced functionality yet. Designed to help save critical time and improve bottom-line results, we dropped this product update just in time for the busy holiday season. The drop-shipping functionally included advanced batch functions that help retailers reduce administrative times by a massive 80 percent when instructing suppliers to ship products directly to their recipients and cutting out the middle man!
Want to know more about drop-shipping in Brightpearl? Click here!
What’s in store for 2016?
2016 is well and truly underway and we’re ready to take the year by storm. Flash forward from 2015 and take a look at what 2016 has in store for Brightpearl…
Accelerating Growth in the US
We’re delighted to share the news that we have raised $11 million in our latest round of financing to accelerate our growth in San Francisco. With the latest funding we are growing our sales and marketing organization and continuing to scale our engineering, service and support teams. What a great way to kick off 2016?
“I’m pleased to share the news, Brightpearl has recently closed an $11m round of funding. The additional funding allows us to accelerate our goal of ensuring independent retailers have the tools and technologies to compete with the larger chains. We have already seen our customers grow their businesses at an astounding rate over the last couple of years. Everyone in Brightpearl will be doubling-down to ensure this trend continues in 2016.”- Andrew Porter, CEO at Brightpearl
Find out more about the funding in the original press release.
Exciting product updates
We also have many exciting (and secret!) product updates coming up in 2016! Subscribe to our mailing list to be the first to hear about our upcoming updates and new features.
What was your favourite product update from the last year? And what do you want to see in 2016? Let us know by commenting below!
