Pet Products Distributor
The Customer
After 25 years of distributing more than 10,000 pet supply SKUs to brick-and-mortar retailers in Southern California, a leading pet products company approached Acenda in 2021 to help develop an online strategy to leverage omnichannel wholesale and direct-to-consumer sales through marketplaces such as Target+, Amazon, and Walmart.
The Issues
Being new to the e-commerce world, they had never engineered their catalog for digital sales. This client harnessed the power of Acenda’s Product Information Management (PIM) and its expertise in marketplace selling to prepare their product catalog for success on platforms like Target+, Amazon, and Walmart.
While taking stock of their existing catalog, Acenda identified significant gaps between the product-level copy and attributes vendors provided and the attributes required by various marketplaces to achieve maximum listing success. Acenda leveraged its deep experience optimizing sales performance across every major online marketplace to establish a product database that was ready for multi-channel expansion.
The Work
Acenda’s technology team worked to integrate data from separate order and inventory management systems. Because Acenda was built by former retail operators who understood that no two back-ends are alike, this system was designed to unite and standardize data across an unlimited number of feeds and formats. As a result, the client was able to service incremental sales and revenue through an established and trusted set of business and operational processes tailored for marketplaces like Target+, Amazon, and Walmart.
The Solution and Launch
Less than one month later, the client was ready to begin selling on marketplaces such as Target+, Amazon, and Walmart. Acenda partner agencies leveraged paid search campaigns, product review syndication, and listing content optimization to drive traffic and boost conversions. Leveraging its cost advantage as a wholesaler, the client was able to offer a broader array of products at competitive prices, outpacing other sellers.
By 2022, the client expanded its marketplace presence, with ambitions to grow beyond their core pet supplies into adjacent categories. Within six months, more than 25% of the client’s gross revenue was generated through its marketplace presence, with nearly all of this being incremental revenue.
Summary
Today, the pet products distributor is a five-star 3P seller on leading marketplaces, including Target+, Amazon, Walmart, Overstock, Google Shopping Actions, Facebook Marketplace, eBay, and more. Their sales soared to eight figures of marketplace revenue, with the majority of their annual revenue now originating from online channels. What started as a traditional, brick-and-mortar distributor has transformed into a marketplace eCommerce success.
