Background
Firepot make over 500,000 healthy dehydrated meals a year, with customers in over 30 countries. Designed for the outdoors, their meals are perfect for camping and hiking adventures and are stocked across the UK, with global B2B customers using their wholesale Shopify site. Firepot’s customers range from large, multi-store retailers to single independent stores or businesses. They use their trade site only for UK customers, as all international sales are handled by their international distributors. We’re pleased to be supporting their store with SparkLayer!
The challenge
Firepot were consistently selling out due to high B2B demand but didn’t have a scalable solution to support their expanding wholesale customer base. They needed a platform that could meet their existing and future needs, enabling them to grow at pace and, most importantly, on their own terms.
The nature of Firepot’s products means that they have a lot of variants with different sizes and packaging needs. Due to this, it was previously a struggle to manage their SKUs and display this to B2B customers. As a result, their customer experience was impacted, as was their operational efficiency.
Firepot offer discounts based on different boxing options at a variant level, which was difficult to manage with previous platforms. This granular method of pricing comes with a level of complexity, and, before using SparkLayer, making a price change meant updating it in multiple places each time rather than one. Firepot needed the flexibility to update tiered pricing regularly as well as make in-line price edits on the fly via their growing Sales team.
The inherited difficulty of pricing and shipping options needed to be transferred into an interface that was simple for customers to interact with. Firepot have always prioritised customer service, and it was important to them to get this element of wholesale buying right.
The solution
A lot of Firepot’s initial challenges were centred around custom price lists. By adding SparkLayer on top of their existing Shopify store, they were able to set up separate price lists for each of their customer groups. This meant each merchant only saw pricing relating to their relationship with Firepot, and that partnerships and discounts could be better managed.
Customers can now easily see the correct price when they log into their account on Firepot's website. They also benefit from quantity-based discounting at a variant level, meaning that the unit price for products can be updated as a customer adds more to the cart in specific thresholds.
Firepot implemented our Sales Agent functionality, empowering their customers to order on behalf of their end customers. This has added an extra layer of customer experience as Sales Reps can make orders in real-time rather than having to email back and forth with customers. Using our Sales Agent feature, Sales Reps can log in as their customers, check that the complex pricing has pulled through to the correct groups, and place and review orders.
We also implemented permission settings within their Sales Agent setup, which has had a positive impact on Divine Essence’s operational efficiency, with various levels of access applied based on user role types. Different team members have the ability to perform varying tasks on behalf of their customers, from adding items to baskets to placing orders and updating product prices.
The results
At trade shows and events, when connected to WiFi, Firepot can easily showcase specific price lists to their current audience, and even process and track customer orders. Shows have historically formed a large part of Firepot’s overall business strategy, so this functionality has been a game-changer for them.
With the addition of our self-service wholesale functionality, customers can place and monitor their orders whenever they want to. Since using SparkLayer, some of Firepot’s legacy retailers who previously favoured ordering via phone call or email are now using the online platform due to its ease of use. This has enhanced Firepot’s ability to sell in more countries (30 and counting!) as they don’t need a member of staff online to process orders in real time.
Firepot have benefitted from the combination of 24/7 self-service ordering and Sales Agent support, offering enhanced customer satisfaction at every stage of the journey. SparkLayer has provided a way to elevate Firepot’s existing brand and solution while empowering them to stay true to their core values.
“What I see is the fact that we can grow with a system like this, where it's flexible and gets improved constantly… Sales Agent saves literally hours a week. We went from zero to 40 clients in a day. The most impressive bit was the speed of it - I got it up and running in 3 hours. I’ve probably installed 50 other platforms - and I think SparkLayer is a really good system. Best app I've ever used." ~ John Fisher, Founder
Explore more
To learn more about Firepot, their product range, and the story of their brand, visit their website.
To see how SparkLayer works with Shopify, you can explore via the links below: