Enzyme Solutions (ESI) is a biotechnology company, with its world headquarters in northern Indiana. Enzyme Solutions approached JH in 2018 to review the retail channel of their product line. That retail brand was called Naturally It’s Clean®, a plant-based enzyme home cleaning product. ESI, for several years, was in brick-and-mortar retail (i.e., Whole Foods, Boutique Grocery Stores, etc.) and was starting to rapidly expand online, primarily through the Amazon marketplace. This approach worked well for a transitional period where the product line went through many changes including a full packaging redesign and newly introduced products. The fork in the road came during this period when we encountered many distribution challenges.
Why Go Direct Ecommerce?
One of the distribution challenges we noticed in 2021 was related to the quickly changing landscape that the Amazon FBA program underwent for sellers during the pandemic. One of the greatest challenges was experiencing sales plateau due to inventory restrictive ceilings set by Amazon during this time. It was this hurdle that propelled Naturally It’s Clean® to seek other distribution channels to diversify their approach that could sustain a larger growth strategy long term. In 2021, Naturally It’s Clean decided to add their own Direct-to-Consumer ecommerce channel where they would solve for channel diversification and be confident they could increase promotion without limitations.
The solve was a great fit for JH’s enterprise level MOCE Ecommerce ERP system, but there were some business level decisions that still needed to be made. A few of these included:
- How important is Free Shipping to our consumers?
- How will we be able to include Free Shipping and compete with Amazon?
- What 3rd party system integration were needed for efficiencies?
Free Shipping … Yes or No?
From there we went to work and quickly found out through some market research that Free Shipping was going to need to be a requirement for the new ecommerce experience. In fact, through an online survey we conducted, we concluded that upwards of 2 out of 3 consumers require that an online brand offer free shipping for them to consider buying direct.
Okay, Free Shipping. But how?
From that point, our client researched and discovered the best 3PL options that would ensure flat rate shipping for a box that worked great with our product bottles. Since the product line lends itself well to grouping products together, we were able to create common ‘kits’ that would include 4 products per kit to optimize the product offering and to be able to include free shipping. These kits conveniently covered common areas of the home such as the bathroom, the kitchen and the laundry room. For some of our top selling products, we included concentrate options to be even more price competitive in the marketplace and build incentive to pull that consumer away from their buying patterns (i.e., brick-and-mortar).
3rd Party Integrations, APIs, and Tracking
The MOCE system was then designed to integrate with critical third-party systems the client needed for operations including FedEx Shipping Manager and QuickBooks for their accounting needs. We also wanted to make sure with the increase in promotion that we properly setup the system to handle all the tracking and conversion data necessary to support a multi-channel marketing approach (i.e. Social Media, Google Shopping, Google Ads, Influencer Marketing, etc.). This allows us to make data-driven decisions based on our cost per acquisition averages per channel, influencer and all the way down to a per ad basis.
A Successful Launch!
By January 4, 2022, JH launched the new fully integrated MOCE system for Naturally It’s Clean® beginning this new Direct-to-Consumer chapter for the brand. We have since supported a full-service National Ad Campaign that has increased the level of awareness and promotion to begin competing on the next level nation-wide.
Early success of the launch includes a number of factors and KPIs that we are keeping a close eye on, but a few highlights with only a month under our belt include:
- Engaging Design: High design matters with first impressions and we are seeing very low bounce rates with users (which is a highly debatable statistic anyhow). Almost 1 in 2 visitors are getting past the first page they visit, showing immediate interest in more information – which is great!
- High Conversion Rate: According to Wordstream.com, the median conversion rate for ecommerce websites is 1.84%; whereas, we are seeing upwards of 6% conversion rate with our MOCE website for Naturally It’s Clean.
- Optimize Your Traffic: One of the most cost-effective ways to increase sales without increasing promotional ad spend is to optimize the transactions you’re getting today. We’re excited to see that Naturally It’s Clean is noticing up to 20% of their customers are purchasing more than 1 product kit per transaction, which increases our average sale significantly!
Conclusion
"The team at Naturally It’s Clean® expresses its appreciation for all the hard work by JH to take this initiative from idea to a fully functional / integrated system."
Win Fisher, General Manager – Naturally It’s Clean, LLC
Time for the Sales Pitch
If your company is looking to diversify your sales channel and add an ecommerce component, we’d welcome a chance to connect and learn if we may have a mutual fit. You can start on conversation direct through our Contact Us page, send us an email (info@jhspecialty.com) or by phone at 260-458-5264. We look forward to that next opportunity!
