Background
Sea to Summit is an Australian company founded in Perth in 1983, specialising in award-winning lightweight camping and hiking gear. From their Australian origins, besides their global direct-to-consumer sales, they've expanded globally with a diverse B2B customer base that includes thousands of retailers worldwide, from small independent outdoor shops to major national chains.
The challenge
As the B2B side of their business continued to expand globally, Sea to Summit faced increasingly complex online B2B requirements. Their wholesale customer base was growing beyond the original European and Australian markets, requiring capabilities their existing eCommerce platform simply couldn't provide - including support for multiple currencies beyond EUR and AUD, as well as customer-specific needs.
With complex product lines and multiple regional systems already in place, they needed a more sophisticated B2B platform that could seamlessly integrate with their 3PL warehouse management system.
The previous B2B platform was creating operational inefficiencies through its limited user interface. Sales representatives and customers alike struggled with basic functions: product searches returned inconsistent results, variant information was difficult to access, and stock availability data lacked clarity. Without visibility into stock replenishment ETAs, customers couldn't plan their orders effectively.
Pre-orders presented a particular challenge in Europe, requiring substantial manual processing. These orders needed specialised pricing structures different from standard pricing - a complexity that became even more difficult when combined with non-Euro currencies. The transition to a new system has significantly streamlined this process.
Behind the scenes, Sea to Summit was navigating a significant digital transformation. Transitioning other parts of their global infrastructure was taking place at the same time as the new B2B implementation. This created unique technical challenges, particularly around product identification. The system couldn't use SKUs as primary identifier keys, forcing Sea to Summit to maintain duplicate article IDs for each product and manually reconcile data across platforms.
The situation in Australia presented its own set of challenges. Their B2B operation manages not just Sea to Summit products but 27 additional brands. Australia is serving a diverse customer base with customer-specific pricing structures. The existing Australian B2B platform couldn't support these pricing requirements, making sales campaign management exceptionally labour-intensive. Additionally, this platform was built on outdated technology that had ceased receiving updates, necessitating a complete replacement with a more robust solution.
Sea to Summit needed a flexible B2B solution that could support this phased transition while maintaining seamless operations for their growing sales team and wholesale customers across regions. SparkLayer's pricing API would prove particularly valuable in connecting the Australian B2B to their finance system, allowing pricing campaigns to be run with the finance system as the central source of truth.
The solution
Using SparkLayer's metafields functionality has been transformative for Sea to Summit's operations, allowing them to:
- Connect customer identifiers with their financial systems
- Display RRP information to appropriate customer groups
- Customise pricing, minimum order quantities, and product availability for different customer segments
- Implement custom product identifiers that integrate with their legacy systems
Sea to Summit have now established the comprehensive price list structure they needed and added custom fields to their checkout to streamline the invoicing process. Using Shopify's native tagging system, they can create customer-specific price lists and control which prices customers see on the website versus at checkout.
The Sales Agent feature enables their sales network to represent B2B customers and place orders on their behalf. This has been extremely valuable as Sea to Summit has Sales Agents with their own networks of B2B customers who can now operate the platform on behalf of their clientele.
For their larger retail chains, the Company Users feature has proven essential. It allows multiple purchasing staff from the same company to access Sea to Summit's B2B platform with different permission levels, streamlining the ordering process for these important customers.
The results
The implementation of SparkLayer has transformed Sea to Summit's B2B operations with substantial, measurable benefits. By streamlining their wholesale processes, they've reduced manual work associated with pre-ordering, pricing campaigns, and general ordering procedures.
The platform's flexibility has removed significant friction for Sea to Summit's sales network, enabling their representatives to support existing clients more effectively while expanding into new relationships. This enhanced capability comes at a crucial time as Sea to Summit positions itself for further expansion into new markets, languages, and currencies; infrastructure that is now in place and ready to scale.
Customer satisfaction metrics have shown marked improvement, particularly as B2B clients can now seamlessly incorporate Sea to Summit's ordering platform into their annual sales planning workflows. The ability to set account balances, customise net terms, and enforce appropriate order value limits has created a more tailored experience that meets the specific needs of their diverse wholesale network.
The business impact has been clear and measurable: Sea to Summit has recorded positive year-on-year growth in net sales, increased order frequency, and larger average cart sizes since implementing the SparkLayer solution. The platform's ability to support their complex business requirements while remaining user-friendly has proven to be a significant competitive advantage in the outdoor equipment wholesale market.
"We’ve been using SparkLayer for over 3 years now - it’s customisable, with great APIs, integrates easily with Shopify, and has a great price point. SparkLayer’s customer service team responds quickly to requests. We’re always pushing for new features, and the responsiveness and roadmap have been impressive." ~ Lauri Jalonen, Full-Stack Developer/ Integration Specialist
Explore more
To learn more about Sea to Summit, their product range, and the story of their brand, visit the Sea to Summit global website.
To see how SparkLayer works with Shopify, you can explore via the links below: