Chefs' Toys

 

Rebirth of a Foodservice Company 

Marketing Strategy, Rebrand, eCommerce, Digital Marketing, Business Development, PR 

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Chefs’ Toys did something remarkable. The company was founded by a Chef who wanted to help other Chefs, first with knife sharpening services, then selling gadgets, then equipment. By always doing right by their customer, their business grew into one of the largest foodservice equipment sellers in the US. And they did this without a marketing department. 

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The Challenge 

Out of nowhere, companies on the east coast began making a dent in Chefs’ Toys marketshare by selling similar products online and shipping them into their market. Margins were dropping. Competition rising. The company’s website was in dire straights. Steve Dickler, CEO was at a party and asked a stranger if they knew someone who could help them compete online. They referred Steve to Jim Wendt. After meeting over coffee, the two hit it off. Wendt presented a similar case study about Big Train showing the impact a sound digital strategy could have on the company. 

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The Solution 

Wendt proposed the following: 

• Establish a budget to hire staff, web development, rebranding, tradeshow, and digital marketing 

• Build a marketing team that included eCommerce, social media and design expertise

• Rebrand the company to establish credibility online and to help drive conversions

• Drive PR by piggybacking companies that have established relationships with So Cal food and chef influencers and by building relationships with top so Cal PR leaders

• Revamp its trade show presence 

• Launch all new ChefsToys.com site and B2B Amazon business in parallel

• Launch all new social media effort to build awareness with chefs playing on the passion of food

 

The Results 

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• Built a new 7-figure sales channel via Amazon 

• Launched a new eCommerce website tripling online sales in its first year

• Built a new VIP client ordering system online 

• Established the #2 presence on Instagram in one year with excellent engagement with chef influencers

• Created a new value brand: Valora 

• Built a presence with industry relevant media including the So Cal Restaurant Radio show, OC Foodies Awards, Tasty Video media company, top PR managers, and leading So Cal publications. 

• Free PR exposure with top social media influencers, media and radio outlets And the best success measure of all: contributed to successful company acquisition by TriMark. 

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"I highly recommend Jim for any company that wants to beat the competition."

Steve Dickler, Founder, CEO Chefs' Toys (retired)

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Big Train

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B2B Beverage Company Reinvents Itself 

Digital Transformation, Rebrand, Omnichannel eCommerce, New DTC Channel, Social Media Marketing, SEO, Content Development, Copywriting

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Big Train was that great company that nobody knew about unless you were in the coffee business. Despite being in business for 20+ years, the company had the worst website in the industry and an extremely poor online presence.

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The Challenge

Ingredients prices were rising fast. Competition in the gourmet drink mix industry was popping up from all over. Smart distributors were selling products online at absurd prices. The company growth was flat. Squatters were sitting on the @bigtrain handles on major social media sites. And random user was pretending to be Big TRain online misrepresenting the company only to make money off of AdSense program.

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The Solution

Robyn Hawkins, Big Train’s CEO, hired Jim Wendt to create and implement a digital strategy. Wendt’s mission was to take Big Train from worst to first in the industry in terms of online presence. Wendt documented the customer journey of b2b clients. This uncovered a need for displaying product ingredient information online and a desire for more recipe content. Because Big Train had a registered trademark, Wendt approached the legal departments at Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube and asked them to turn over the @BigTrain handles. It worked- all @BigTrain handles now were owned by the company. Wendt also got a catfishing site shut down.

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Wendt also assisted with branding efforts. Big Train designs and typography marketing were all over the place. To be successful online, Wendt drove the efforts to refresh the company brand and worked with designers to create an all-new style guide for the company with the goal of creating consistency in typography and color and a stronger logo across all marketing including print and web. New product development efforts included helping to bring Fit Frappe to market (coffee protein drink mix). 

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Wendt led efforts and project managed the company’s website build. By documenting all of the business rules for taxes, shipping, operations, fulfillment, and pricing first, Wendt was able to create a comprehensive well-documented RFP to facilitate a major website redesign effort, complete with systems integration requirements. This included platform selection, development partner selection, and creating a budget.

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Because no rewards solution existed at the time that would allow Big Train to give its own product away as rewards benefits, Wendt reached out to a software development firm he had worked with in the past to custom build a cost-effective online reward system from scratch after writing up detailed requirements. This system was integrated into the checkout process. Wendt helped to brand it as the OnTrack Rewards Program. 

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The eCommerce system was integrated with Dynamics ERP. Once it launched, the company had a fully functional omnichannel eCommerce system allowing distributors, business customers, and consumers to buy online.

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After analyzing social media brand mentions, it was clear there was strong positive consumer sentiment toward Big Train products. Wendt used this data to suggest the company sell products direct to consumers. Wendt launched affiliate marketing getting lots of low-cost brand exposure while driving new sales online. Wendt performed keyword research and analyzed competitors. This helped to create an effective SEO and content plan. SEO tactics included on-page efforts like keyword-rich URLs for every page, meta titles, meta descriptions, H1’s, keyword-rich file names, and alt tags. Off-page tactics included backlinks from social accounts, strategic blog posts, video posts, affiliate links, digital PR, and partner links.

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The Results 

Digital marketing transformed the company. Big Train had the best EBIDTA performance in its history a year after launching its new digital strategy. Call volumes decreased by 30% as the new website had more of the information clients were looking for, giving the team more time to focus on selling. Despite concerns over channel conflict by selling direct, Big Train didn’t lose a single distributor. Daily website traffic grew by 1000%. Organic website traffic became the highest traffic channel driving significant new business and sales to the company.

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“I would highly recommend Jim to any company that would like to raise the bar. He increased our presence and sales with his efforts.” 

 

Robyn Hawkins, CEO of Big Train

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The company created a new 7-figure direct sales channel capturing the highest margins in the company’s history. Another 7-figure sales channel was developed via Amazon. Customer loyalty improved. Creative geo-targeted online ad campaigns help drive users to retailer partner stores.

By implementing some innovative social media efforts, and targeting YouTubers and other influencers, the company had the best social media presence and engagement compared to its competitors.

Not too long after, Big Train was acquired by Kerry, in part because of the company’s online success. 

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UncleVic

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B2C Consumer Electronics Start-up Carves out a Niche 

Marketing Strategy, Digital Marketing, Branding, SEO, eCommerce, Creative Program’s, Affiliate Marketing, PR

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Like many distributors, they count on high volume sales to lift low-margin profits. The company wanted to create a direct-to-consumer business. They signed with a website development partner and then secured a warehouse next door. They needed a plan.

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The Challenge 

The company knew the refurbished computer and electronics business was already saturated with lots of resellers online. Major competitors like NewEgg and Best Buy were also jumping into the business of selling refurbished and discount products. They needed a way to stand out and be different, and drive sales with a very limited marketing budget.

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The Solution 

The investors contacted Jim Wendt and was asked to create a plan of attack. On day one Wendt got to work right away focusing on two things: SWOT Analysis (Strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats). From that research, Wendt created a positioning map. While the company had unbelievable deals like 50% off of Vizio LCD TVs, the problem was they had relatively smaller quantities.

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Wendt recommended several things. One was the idea that the company should play off its weaknesses. By creating flash sales on its home page, the company could list its inventory and dynamically show the numbers dropping creating a sense of urgency as users visited the site. In addition, we executed a hugely successful multi-pronged Penny Pincher marketing effort for Black Friday where random “throw-away” products were sold for a penny. A landing page was created off of a new domain name: DontTellEveryBody.com which also included our attempt to create a viral video. This made UncleVic.com stand out, get free publicity, and turned its greatest weakness into a strength.

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Products that sold very well at the time were refurbished gaming consoles like Xbox 360s and PlayStations. In order to stand out in our marketing efforts, we decided to brand ourselves with gaming products first, and computer products second. This created much needed differentitaion.

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At one point the company had hundreds of random single SKU LCD monitors. The challenge though was that merchandising a new product online takes a lot of work for every new product considering new product pages, product descriptions, images, and specifications. Wendt recommended a bold new move. Wendt experimented with a new “Mystery Monitor” campaign, wondering if users really cared about specs as long as they knew the size, color, and brand of the monitor. One image was created for all products: An Uncle Vic logo on a monitor screen. In a period of days, the company sold all its inventory. The instincts were right. They turned dead inventory into new profits.