elope INC. Customer Story

With B2C Sales Surging, elope Plans Thoughtful Growth Strategy

The top-selling item for elope was its custom-designed costume “Pig Kit,” a delightfully simple set of plush pig ears, a nose and a springy tail that epitomizes what the two brothers who launched the company as a kiosk in a Colorado Springs mall knew decades ago: dress-up silliness can be serious business. elope (which stands for Everybody’s Laughing on Planet Earth) has spent 25 years building a whimsical collection of hats, costumes and accessories. The company’s catalog consists of half licensed items and the rest (unique for its space) designed in-house to fulfill their mission of sharing laughter and wearing happiness on a global scale.

COMPANY

elope, Inc.

LOCATION

Colorado Springs, Colo.

INDUSTRY

Retail

EMPLOYEES

NUMBER OF USERS

NUMBER OF COUNTRIES

2 (United States, Canada)

SYSTEM REPLACED

Sage

NETSUITE PRODUCT IMPLEMENTED

NetSuite

IMPLEMENTATION PARTNER

NetSuite Professional Services

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“Because we had been with Sage for so long, we lost ourselves in our own band-aids, and didn’t know what was needed anymore. We were excited to have different ways of doing things from NetSuite’s industry experience.” Eli Rustenbach, Strategic Analysis Team Lead, elope, Inc.

When Sales Get Serious

B2C spikes with Amazon: When elope started selling its products on Amazon three years ago, B2C sales quickly rivaled its then B2B-centric business. That first year, just before its busiest time (Halloween), its decade-old Sage system slowed to a crawl, forcing the team to manually upload and fulfill orders coming in by the minute on Amazon. Nobody—neither their new customers, nor elope—were laughing about the additional time and labor it took to process the new B2C orders.

No Sage advice apparent: Eyeing expansion to eBay, Walmart.com and continued growth on elope.com, elope knew Sage couldn’t cut it. NetSuite’s SuiteSuccess implementation made a robust ERP implementation realistic for the small business, which could rely on a fixed rate, influential best practices and an experienced NetSuite consulting team.

Virtual warehouses, real ROI: With a single source of data, elope uses virtual warehouses and real-time stock information for demand planning across 1,000 SKUs for B2B and B2C sales, and optimizes fulfillment from warehouses in Colorado Springs and China. New business from eBay and Walmart.com, as well as increased direct to consumer business on elope.com, has already paid for the implementation.

Making the world laugh: B2C sales are up 40 percent year over year, growing to half of elope’s total sales, while automation, prebuilt reports and access to real-time inventory data enable it to analyze and plan for growth. The company is now eyeing international expansion in Europe.