the-store.com
Client since: 2016
Uses: Sellercloud
Industry: Consumer Goods
Founded: 1988
Headquarters: Mobile, AL
Company size: 22 employees
“Within one month of finishing onboarding, both Amazon and Wayfair asked us to manufacture wholesale products for them… There was no way we could have said ‘yes’ without Sellercloud.”
Denny Knight, Founder, the-store.com
Introduction
For the-store.com, there’s much more to success than being in the right place at the right time. What started as a mall kiosk in Mobile, Alabama, now supplies major national chains and international conglomerates with private-labeled items and boasts a team of 22 employees. The the-store.com team even helped Amazon develop and launch their “One Click Purchase” button. Behind all of that, though, was a full suite of inventory management, warehousing, and shipping solutions.
Read on below to learn more about how founder Denny Knight utilized Sellercloud to help him grow the-store.com into the behemoth that helped companies like Amazon, Walmart, and Wayfair become the empires they are today.
Before Sellercloud
Founded in 1998 in Mobile, Alabama, the-store.com started from humble beginnings, selling products purchased from other manufacturers at a small kiosk in a local mall. Their purchasing, inventory, and accounting systems were mostly simple and straightforward in nature.
“Our spreadsheets and email threads worked for our inventory purposes at the time. But we also knew that we’d need to think radically differently about our future as a company and, specifically, the technology we were using, if we really did want to grow,” Knight mentioned.
Though this model worked, they noticed that most of their competitors were manufacturing and selling their own products. The events of September 11, 2001, would change everything.
The Challenge
Noticing an immediate demand for US-manufactured products, Knight and team found a US-based supplier and created their own catalog of SKUs they began selling both at their own mall kiosk and to other stores.
Within a matter of months, they were approached by a major private US retailer to sell and drop ship private label items on the retailer’s behalf. The retailer, already a Sellercloud customer, encouraged the-store.com’s team to onboard with Sellercloud as well.
Knight spoke to the monumental challenge they now faced: “It was ‘go time.’ We couldn’t ‘wait and see’ or ‘figure things out.’ We knew we had to find an inventory and shipping partner that we could rely on to build our company with and do things the right way the first time.”
The Solution
For Knight and the-store.com’s team, the decision to partner with Sellercloud as their all-in-one e-commerce solution was clear.
“I’m so glad we found and onboarded with Sellercloud when we did. Within one month of finishing onboarding, both Amazon and Wayfair asked us to manufacture wholesale products for them. Of course, we couldn’t turn that down. There was no way we could have said ‘yes’ without Sellercloud,” Knight said.
The-store.com’s partnership with e-commerce giants like Amazon, Wayfair, Walmart, and Lowe’s, for example, demanded that his products were in stock and ready for shipment as soon as an order was placed. Sellercloud’s EDI and FTP integrations enabled them to do just that.
On average, Sellercloud’s back-end systems help the-store.com ship products in just 4-6 hours from the time of order, Knight stated. Sellercloud’s FTP integrations and the ability to schedule tasks enabled the company to scale like they never would have imagined. Knight mentioned, “We can set these FTP connections up in roughly 20-30 minutes as opposed to months. That made all of the difference.”
After Sellercloud
Since onboarding with Sellercloud, the-store.com has been able to integrate over 200 different EDI connections to their portfolio of partners. Knight quotes Sellercloud’s ability to enable them to “sell to anyone” as a key aspect of their success.
“We’ve grown over 700-800% since onboarding with Sellercloud and scaled our team from five employees to 22. We’ve also doubled their warehouse capacity and now have over 250,000 SKUs in our catalog.”
“Even after all these years, Sellercloud is still the best fit for who we are, what we do, and where we’re going. The service we receive is next-level; it’s like we’re part of the family,” Knight finished.
