Video Testimonial
I can’t imagine our business would have survived had we not made a decision to come to Sellercloud 12, 13 years ago.
IT Director, Bambi Baby
Bambi Baby
Client since: 2012
Uses: Sellercloud, Shipbridge
Industry: General Merchandise Consumer Goods
Founded: 1976
Headquarters: Belleville, NJ
Company size: 30-40 employees
Types of items sold: Mid- to high-end baby retail, including infant car seats, strollers, and nursery furniture such as cribs and dressers.
“I can’t imagine our business would have survived had we not made a decision to come to Sellercloud 12, 13 years ago.”
Josh Weiss, IT Director, Bambi Baby
Before Sellercloud
Bambi Baby is a family-owned business founded in 1976 specializing in baby retail. Much of their success is due to their customer approach. “Our entire philosophy is education and not just showing you the most expensive stroller,” IT Director Josh Weiss explains. “We want to sell you the stroller that makes sense for your lifestyle.” This philosophy has served Bambi Baby well and helped it grow exponentially.
Until the early 2000s, Bambi Baby only had a brick-and-mortar presence until Josh Weiss built their first website when home one weekend from college with a couple of roommates. Back then, ecommerce was just a way for Bambi Baby to expand its business beyond New York and New Jersey
The Challenge
Bambi Baby was using ERP software to manage inventory and orders, but they were running into problems. “There was a ton of bottlenecks that we were experiencing. Shipping was not fluid. Inventory [and] communicating with the website was always a problem,” said Weiss.
Furthermore, Bambi Baby still had many manual processes, which were time-consuming and error prone. They also had nothing to let them know when a product was close to being out of stock.
Bambi Baby began searching for a software solution that could improve processes within their company, specifically order management and inventory purchasing.
The Solution
In 2012, Bambi Baby found what it was looking for in Sellercloud and has stuck with it ever since. The solution has made it easier for Bambi Baby to expand to new channels, such as Shopify, helping them increase their visibility online.
The biggest difference Descartes Sellercloud has made for Bambi Baby is that orders are automatically sent to where they need to be and don’t need to involve many staff members. “An order comes in and it gets populated right into our shipping station. So you no longer have to manually process every order,” said Weiss.
Instead, picklists are automatically generated and ready for warehouse workers to pick. “I have my warehouse workers come in in the morning, and they have a list of orders they need to pick, pack and ship. It’s saved office hours,” said Weiss. Non-warehouse staff no longer needs to be involved and can work on other tasks, improving efficiency and allowing them to work on tasks related to company growth.
Weiss also regularly uses Descartes Sellercloud’s robust reporting features to make business decisions. Not only does it help Bambi Baby order more efficiently, but it also notifies them when products are close to selling out—something they couldn’t previously track.
Another feature Bambi Baby uses regularly is ‘saved searches,’ which allow users to save specific search criteria so they don’t need to input the same parameters each time, making it easier to find things they use more frequently.
Weiss tells us they use saved searches daily to pull certain order types. For example, orders that could be fraudulent, include discontinued products, or need to be expedited. “100% saved searches help us save time,” says Weiss. Being able to save certain search criteria prevents Bambi Baby from manually creating these searches every time.
Furthermore, Descartes Sellercloud helps Bambi Baby consolidate their ecommerce and brick-and-mortar operations by communicating available inventory between physical stores and online channels so that the right order goes to the right store with available inventory, effectively turning each store into a distribution center. “Descartes Sellercloud is definitely going to be helping us grow our footprint in our brick and mortar,” adds Weiss.
After Sellercloud
Descartes Sellercloud was pivotal in enabling Bambi Baby to grow both online and offline. Today, they have five stores in New York, New Jersey, and Florida. “We just opened our fifth in Miami. The grand opening was two weeks ago. Our business experienced tremendous, tremendous growth since we have been working with Sellercloud,” Weiss said.
Weiss highlights automation as one of the key things Descartes Sellercloud has helped with, making his job much easier and enabling their business to thrive in the fast-paced ecommerce industry. “I can’t imagine how our business would have survived had we not made a decision to start using Sellercloud 12, 13 years ago,” he said.
Because Descartes Sellercloud is so flexible, Weiss recommends that businesses considering the solution should have a good understanding of what they want to achieve. “I think it’s important that you have your goals defined and go to Descartes with those goals because they helped us customize the solution to help solve our problems,” Weiss explained.
Bambi Baby has always felt that Sellercloud was able to support them whenever they need assistance. “Their support has always been good,” said Weiss, adding that “[it] has been instrumental in supporting our expansion.”
Looking to the future, Bambi Baby believes that Descartes Sellercloud will continue to help them grow and achieve their vision. Weiss ends by saying, “Now, that Sellercloud is part of the Descartes family, we’re really looking forward to seeing where the next level will take us.”
