Ooni’s is a great success story. From a standing start in 2012, this Scottish company has become the world’s number one manufacturer of pizza ovens. Ooni’s product designs have proven to be a game changer in the industry. Unlike bulky, brick-built pizza ovens which take hours to heat up, these sleek, portable products reach 500°C in just 15 minutes and produce perfect, restaurant-quality pizzas in 60 seconds. The company now has over 70 employees, a global distribution network and a rapidly expanding online business.
When Financial Controller Jeff Morrison started work at Ooni in 2018, the company already had a successful online presence based on several Shopify storefronts, and growing sales on Amazon marketplace. His first task was to implement a new ERP system to handle the company’s supply chain. The business chose SAP Business ByDesign alongside ChannelUnity to handle its marketplace sales and also the integration between the SAP solution and Shopify.
Jeff remembers that the SAP Business ByDesign solution had fewer out-of-the-box integrations with online marketplaces and ecommerce platforms than some of the other ERP solutions being considered, but on meeting ChannelUnity, it was clear that integration would not be a problem – “The people we met from ChannelUnity clearly had the expertise we needed to make sure our marketplace revenues would continue to increase”.
“We did look at other alternatives to ChannelUnity, but the other solutions didn’t cover all the marketplaces we needed, or became very expensive very quickly, for all the functionality we wanted”.
Rapid Expansion
According to Jeff, “ChannelUnity lets us go after new opportunities, without delay. We have a fast-moving business and when our directors make a decision, we need our systems to respond quickly”.
Since go-live, Ooni has used ChannelUnity to
- Add several new country sites on Amazon
- Added Ebay
- Set up a number of new Shopify instances
- Tailor order import to SAP to ensure orders are fulfilled as required
- Integrate PledgeManager, a solution to allow customers to pre-order new product designs in advance of their official launch date.
“Our business has grown phenomenally in the last few years, which has been helped significantly through increased online sales. ChannelUnity has enabled new opportunities and coped with every challenge we’ve set” – Andrew Brown, CFO
Coping with Coronavirus
Around the world, Ooni’s products are sold through retail outlets such as hardware stores and garden centres. When non-essential retail closed down in the spring of 2020, Ooni switched its focus to its B2C channels, especially Amazon marketplace, all handled through ChannelUnity. It’s easy to see how “restaurant-quality pizza at home” was a winner during lockdown. “We’re in a very fortunate position, with business increasing over the last few months – we were shipping more units than normal as consumers were looking for ways to spend time at home”.
However, in some markets where Ooni relied on its Fulfilled-By-Amazon business, there was a short period where Amazon themselves stopped shipping all non-essential goods. Using ChannelUnity, Ooni was able to easily switch from FBA to Fulfilled-By-Merchant, routing orders to locations where Ooni had its own stock.
Results
Ooni has achieved over 150% growth in revenue since the beginning of 2019 when they started working with Channel Unity.
“The ChannelUnity solution has certainly allowed us to scale up our ecommerce sales in general, and by selling more B2C, we’ve increased profitability this year”, says Jeff. “The initial implementation was fantastic, but it’s also coped with all our changing requirements. The software itself is very flexible and the support team have a can-do-attitude towards whatever we need”.
