The annual International Housewares Association painted Chicago in an array of vibrant colors earlier this month, with more than 1,600 exhibitors and nearly 30,000 home and housewares professionals from all over the world. The show highlighted the latest trends for every room and offered a glimpse into the future of retail and housewares, from in-home composting and indoor pizza ovens to stylish hydration products.
Many of the innovative companies in attendance, as it turns out, run on NetSuite.
The show featured insightful keynotes focused on the future of housewares, trends in consumer and retail, marketing strategies, and how to succeed in the current marketplace and beyond.
One session that hit home with audiences at the Inspired Home Show, hosted by the International Housewares Association, was Get Your Housewares in Order: Investing in KPIs for Success, presented by Ranga Bodla, VP of field engagement marketing at NetSuite, and Hayden Wadsworth, CEO of HydroJug.
Drinkware company HydroJug was founded in 2016 and is on a mission to keep millions of plastic water bottles out of landfills while keeping its customers healthy and hydrated.
Here are three top takeaways from the session.
1. True omnichannel functionality goes beyond where you sell
Companies that achieve true omnichannel functionally benefit from a diversified customer base, and that limits risk. But brands need to be tactical in their approach to capture customers where they shop and avoid channel conflicts, which can often arise. Discounting, for example, needs to be managed with sensitivity. Wadsworth advised attendees to keep their partners aware of the product lifecycle, compensation plans, and when they may discount and how deeply.
Different retailers also have different product needs and customers, so he advises brands to make recommendations that fit the partner’s unique criteria instead of offering the full catalog.
“Retailers like Walmart need their own SKUs, so we have to be able to differentiate those product categories from something we would offer at Dicks or Sam’s Club,” he said.
In HydroJug’s case, the team used historical data that it drew from NetSuite to generate a supply-and-demand forecast and create a product catalog tailored to each retail partner.
Striking a balance between channels becomes more complicated as a brand grows, said Wadsworth, so having the right tools to manage these relationships and provide visibility becomes essential.
2. For a small business, quality control can deliver big returns
All businesses need to protect profits by managing inventory effectively. In 2020, many learned the hard way that to succeed at this, you must be able to move quickly.
When Covid shut down brick-and-mortar retail, brands like Nike doubled down on a direct-to-consumer strategy, which not only improved their profit margins but created a stronger connection with customers. This is, as Wadsworth calls it, the “gold standard for retail” — the ability to be flexible and find opportunities fast when conditions change. That’s possible only when you have all your data in one place and one source of insights to guide decisions.
Bodla advised attendees to always understand where sales are trending and what that means for their cash flow. Decide where and what to discount deliberately based on shifts in material demand.
“A lot of the D2C environment is FOMO — fear of missing out — marketing,” said Wadsworth. “Everyone wants to have a hand on the next best thing, including us.”
For example, the consumer demand for stainless steel over plastic was something that HydroJug took notice of. But they had to be strategic.
“The materials for stainless steel were a lot more expensive, and we still had a lot of plastic inventory, so we needed to understand both the opportunity cost and the capital cost and decide when to discount before launching a new product,” he said.
Brands need the ability to scan the environment and know where to put dollars back to optimize the business. Having information at your fingertips is essential to making those decisions. Getting your financials in order is the first step, said Bodla.
3. Growing out of your storage units means growing into an ERP
Sometimes an ERP transition is not a linear decision but rather the result of a sudden realization that the status quo no longer works. In HydroJug’s case, discussions about needing a new system on which to run the business got serious when the team started to focus more on cash conversion and growth.
“At one point I kept on having to upgrade the square footage of our storage unit every few months,” said Wadsworth. “That’s when I realized we were growing quickly and needed a plan to scale.”
To make good decisions based on key KPIs such as ROAS (return on ad spend) and MER (marketing efficiency ratio), your financials need to be on point. While tools like Shopify measure sales, brands need to get more sophisticated as they become truly omnichannel and the business gets more complex. That’s when an ERP comes into play.
Without a centralized system of control, managing relationships among a fulfillment center, 3PL, and warehouse becomes complicated. Outbound shipping, for example, can be a big cost to growing brands. HydroJug was able to turn shipping into a competitive advantage, according to Wadsworth, by developing direct relationships with shipping consolidators and making excellent product delivery a differentiator.
The bottom line is, as a brand grows, the time that’s available to make decisions shrinks and the stakes grow higher. The HydroJug journey was one of rapid growth and expansion, exploration of true omnichannel delivery, and ensuring replicability of a strong brand experience.
Thank you International Housewares Association(opens in new tab) for a great show, a successful Networking after Dark event🥂, a fantastic session between Ranga Bodla(opens in new tab) and Hayden Wadsworth(opens in new tab) on HydroJug(opens in new tab), and the chance to feel the full force of the NetSuite customer and soon-to-be-customer community.
Learn more about NetSuite software for houseware companies(opens in new tab).