Introduction
Laird Superfood is struggling with missed phone calls at 2 AM for caffeine and healthy fats. Even after hiring additional staff to take wholesale orders for their popular coconut cream and coffee, the company was missing many orders and leaving money on the table.
Paul Hodge, CEO of Laird, said, “We were in bed when some of our wholesale customers were calling to order.”
Some smaller wholesale customers had to place their orders during the early morning hours because they needed to run payment lines and serve their customers during the day.
Hodge stated, “4 or 5 AM is the only time they have available to do their own stock work.”
During regular business hours, Laird’s phones were ringing off the hook with increased demand from wholesale customers. Unfortunately, the only ways to place wholesale orders were through phone or email.
Hodge mentioned, “The manual order-taking process was very costly and time-consuming. We had to increase staffing and hire more personnel to take the orders.”
Surely, the inefficient manual order-taking process did not reflect the performance-enhancing superfoods that the company’s founder and famous surfer, Laird Hamilton, dedicated his life to creating.
Hamilton rides ocean waves reaching 70 feet that potentially threaten his lungs…
Will the complexities of growth wipe out the famous star business?
Coffee Enhancement
The human rat experiment on the surfboard…
That’s how Hamilton’s lifelong experiment of self-testing and seeking the right combination of nutrients to give him the energy and focus to ride some of the world’s largest waves for five to six hours straight can be described. The idea struck Hamilton when he found himself adding a spoonful of butter to his morning coffee.
Hamilton said, “I realized the need for healthy fats, and I really love good coffee, so I started experimenting with different ways to combine the two. I knew there had to be a better way – better sweeteners, better fats, better cream, better nutrition.”
The result is a coconut-based dairy-free alternative to traditional cream designed to provide a nutrient-rich coffee enhancer that gives extreme athletes, moms, and business professionals the energy they need to maintain peak performance. Together with a complex, uniquely packaged organic coffee blend designed to stay fresh longer, Hamilton and his wife, professional volleyball player Gabrielle Reece, launched Laird Superfood in 2015.
Hodge said, “It took Hamilton twenty years of experimentation to find the perfect formula. This is the gateway that helps you be a better version of yourself and put more fuel in your tank.”
Instead of the immediate crash after a regular cup of coffee, the Laird team says its non-pasteurized creamers provide healthy fats that interact with caffeine molecules and break down over time, releasing energy steadily over longer periods.
“I feel better and am more productive. It’s a clean burn, and I’ve lost twenty pounds since I started working here seven weeks ago. I’m promoting a product I know works. I’m the proof; you can really feel the difference,” said Luan Pham, Laird’s chief marketing officer.
However, the company will soon need a boost of its own energy…
According to Hodge, BigCommerce, Laird’s e-commerce platform at the time, left the team feeling overwhelmed and exhausted. Specifically, Hodge says the platform did not provide the integrations or features necessary to expand their coffee wholesale and retail business.
Hodge stated, “We had to switch. We needed a powerful platform that provided a fully automated wholesale sales portal that customers could access anytime they wanted.”
Sales
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You might think the company headquarters resembles a TV show from the 1980s. Employees were manually entering wholesale orders as fast as they could, but the phone kept ringing.
Even the super cream and coffee mix couldn’t give the workers the energy they needed to keep up day and night.
That killer wave Hamilton was always looking for…
It was now targeting the company he had spent decades building.
Wholesale Done Big
The phones suddenly stopped ringing…
But the new quiet enveloping Laird’s headquarters in Sisters, Oregon was a sign that the company had managed to overcome the wave of complexity that threatened to drown it. After moving to Shopify and upgrading to Shopify Plus, Hodge and his team now had the powerful wholesale sales platform they desperately needed to scale.
Hodge said: “It’s really exciting that Shopify Plus has built exactly what we need. It works great and saves us a lot of time.”
In addition to streamlining processes that Laird’s staff previously had to complete manually, the wholesale portal also significantly enhanced the customer experience in three key ways: Order Placement – Customers can log into the portal and place orders anytime they want without having to call or email a Laird representative. Order History – Customers registered in the portal can easily access their billing history, which Hodge says is a popular feature and gives customers instant visibility they didn’t have before. Order Tracking – If customers lose their tracking number or don’t receive a confirmation email with the tracking number, they can easily retrieve the number themselves and track the order status in real time.
Hodge said: “Customers just love it. They log in and everything they need is there on their dashboard.”
Today, wholesale sales account for about a quarter of Laird’s sales. However, Hodge estimates that wholesale sales, the fastest-growing segment of the company, will represent 75% of sales within two years.
Fam said: “Shopify allows us to scale when we need to.”
Since moving their business to Shopify Plus: Sales growth in Q2 of 2017 compared to the previous year was 550%. Monthly sales increased by 15%. The company, which had 12 people, has now grown to 29 people.
Importantly, the wholesale sales channel is causing Laird to rethink how to build its team. For example, instead of hiring two employees to answer phones and take wholesale orders manually, Laird can add those workers to marketing and manufacturing teams and increase productivity.
Fam said: “The ability to implement the wholesale process changes how we build our team. It prevents us from losing orders at 2 a.m. and stops customers from waiting to place orders until we’re in the office. It solves many problems.”
In addition to integrating individual adult wholesale customers, Laird recently used the portal to obtain a large multi-store wholesale client who used the portal to reorder within a week. It’s a channel Hodge suggests also saves money for the company.
Hodge said: “It’s true that having a wholesale portal will save us the equivalent of one employee a year. That’s $50,000 – $60,000 a year and covers the cost of Shopify Plus multiple times.”
It is
Something that makes the accountant feel like swallowing …
But it doesn’t explain why the employees at Laird refuse to take a lunch break.
Warning: Dirty word coming
There is one rule to follow at Laird Superfood … “If you can’t pronounce it, you won’t find it in our products,” Hodge proudly states.
It’s a clean label dominated by whole foods, free from extracts, derivatives, and chemicals that Laird’s team suggests are hard for the body to break down. Fam said, “I’m a former immigrant from New York, and I used to spend $30 a day on coffee. Now I drink one or two cups at most and have the energy I need to perform all day long.”
It’s not just Fam … Laird employees, who are supposed to be powered by the superfoods they make and sell, regularly skip lunch breaks and work out in the company gym instead. Fam said, “We give them the option and pay them if they want to exercise. About 95% of them choose to work out, and then they have more energy and are more productive.”
It’s exactly what the company needs as it expands …
The idea is to ramp up volumes quickly to reduce production costs, build an online brand, and ultimately put the product on the shelves of major retailers. Laird estimates that at the current growth rate, it can supply enough ingredients that meet the company’s strict quality standards for five years.
After that, Laird is expected to invest in farms worldwide to ensure a steady supply of the ingredients necessary to meet the anticipated demand.
One thing Laird won’t invest in?
Another e-commerce platform. “Migration is a dirty word here,” says Hodge. “We’ve tried every platform because we like flexibility and switch when something doesn’t work. The high cost of switching and migration is a big disruption. We’re married to Shopify and love the technology. Save yourself time and money and start with Shopify, and you won’t need to worry about switching as you grow.”
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