Business: Swimwear Apparel
Industry: Wholesale, E-Commerce
City: San Francisco, CA
Business Story & Description
Mooloolaba (pronounced moo•loo’ lä•bä) is a magical beach town nestled on the Sunshine Coast in Queensland, eastern Australia. Mooloolaba means "black water snake" and was named by the aboriginal natives of Australia.
Jen Ryan, CEO of Mooloolaba explains – “As a kid I spent a lot of time in Mooloolaba and it makes me smile every time I visit. Mooloolaba is also the name of my company. We're committed to producing comfortable, quality, stylish surf wear for women. Australian inspired, based in California, we call ourselves a surf wear company but remember, you don't have to surf to wear 'em."
Women's surf wear in America is targeted toward juniors, featuring very short board shorts in teeny-weeny sizes. There isn't really much available for larger and more mature women. Mooloolaba is changing that. They manufacture hip, sophisticated, functional and versatile surf wear for women of all sizes and ages - the target market is women in their 30's and up, including athletes who are muscular and require more realistic sizing. Surfing has transcended fashion for many women, and the number of participants is growing rapidly.
In Currently, Mooloolaba line of products can be found in high end boutiques as well as department and specialty stores - these include Title Nine and well over 70 retail stores throughout the US.
"Agiliron was there every step of the way, effective in their communication of the deployment process and transitioning the business over to the new platform in a timely & orderly fashion."
- Jen Ryan
CEO, Mooloolaba
Our business was getting ready to launch retail and wholesale stores on the web; we started looking for a company that could support us in this effort and deliver an integrated solution that brought together all the various facets of our business and positioned us for growth. We were looking for a partner that we could have open communication with and that could advise us with the technical expertise to deliver this platform in a cost effective way - one that would scale with our business.
Agiliron has been there every step of the way to help get us up and running. They were extremely patient and effective in their communication of the migration and deployment process as we began implementing the elements that were needed and transitioned the business over to the new platform; all the phases were completed in a timely and orderly fashion.
Our confidence grew as we got closer to the launch and we are happy to say the launch is successful and the process of selling our product is going smoothly! The biggest value Agiliron brought to our business is delivering a solid technology platform that can allow us to expand our business without worrying about the infrastructure to manage it, now all the employees have access to the information they need anywhere, anytime. This, combined with their incredible customer support, helped us achieve a successful on line solution!
- Jen Ryan, CEO, Mooloolaba
Seamless integration of sales thru Retail and Wholesale (B2B) WebStores, Catalog & Direct Sales Sales thru these various channels requires visibility - with manual processes and Excel spreadsheets, it was very inefficient to take and process orders and have visibility into the state of the business at any point in time.
Inventory Management and Control across Multiple Sales Channels – given the sales thru various channels, complete and dynamic control over product catalog and inventory is critical to be able to take and fulfill orders. Since there is sales thru retail and wholesale channels, products are updated daily.
Promotions are a critical tool for driving apparel sales esp. as seasons change and new lines are introduced – tools like Specials, Discount Coupons, Flexible Shipping Tables for multiple geographic zones are key elements to move product; ability to manage this dynamically was a challenge
Multi-user backend solution – desktop applications and lack of multi-user access to previous stores administration interface meant that information was siloed and the business staff had limited access to data necessary to do their jobs effectively.
