Global Coffee & Tea Brand

Setting the Stage for DTC Growth for CPG Division

eCommerce Strategy, eCommerce Replatforming, Revenue Growth, Operational & P&L Improvements, Cost Reductions 

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Coming off of a company acquisition & restructuring left its eCommerce business without a leader. Wendt was brought in to right the ship.

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The Challenge 

In the spring of 2020, its online business was frought with issues: 50% of its CPG products were out of stock online. Its Magento website system was breaking constantly and tech support calls were hammering its customer care department. Reporting and setting promotions required developer support. Costs to maintain the Magento ecommerce system were skyrocketing and responsiveness was poor. Costs were out of control. Shipping was slow.

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The Solution 

Wendt implemented the following: 

• Created a new eCommerce strategy roadmap indentifying gaps in the customer experience and updating the eComm tech stack while creating the company's first digital marketing budget for eComm.

• Convinced the Board of Directors to replatform to Shopify Plus despite having a CAPEX expenditure freeze at the time saving the company an estimated $1MM over three years. 

• Aligned with supply chain & operations and re-set forecasting to get inventory back in stock

• Switched several expensive applications to lower costs while maintaining high level of support

• Significantly reduced chargebacks by implementing fraud protection automation

• Lowered credit card processing fees by negotiating with vendors

• Persauded 3PL partner to open a new shipping facility in the LA area significantly reducing inventory shipping costs and times improving speed to delivery to 1-2 shipping days for most online orders. 

• After reviewing analytics and listening to customers Wendt rolled out multiple new product configurations  adding top selling skus.

• Set an annual online marketing calendar and launched new pricision campaigns to minimize discounting and improving margins

• Launched an innovative Mystery Gift campaign as part of a clearance sale to monetize older overstock inventory

• Implemented SEO best practices improving free organic search

• Optimized email marketing improving the quality of emails, optimizing timing and frequency, and adding targeted campaigns and reminders to complement email marketing campaigns

• Launched numerous firsts including subscriptions, bundles, gifting, testimonails & reviews, self manageable administration, detailed reporting

• Created marketplace strategy to lift sales via new online channels

 

The Results 

• Doubled annual online DTC revenues in 10 months

• Reduced operating expenses by well over $1MM by revamping its tech stack

• Achieved 8:1 ROAS with affiliate & Performance display

• Significant improvements in EBIDTA and major KPIs including ROAS, Conversion Rate, Average Order Value, time on site 

• Grew subscriptions to 10% of sales and bundles to 14% of sales from scratch

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 food service 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 and Founder 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 build a marketing team from scratch: hire staff, web development, rebranding, tradeshow, and digital marketing 

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

• Rebrand the company top-down to establish a more professional and credible brand 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 an all new social media effort to build awareness with chefs 

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The Results 

• According to a leading restaurant industry PR professional “Chefs’ Toys is everywhere.”

• 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

• 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

• Created a new value brand: Valora

• And the best success measure of all: accelerated successful company acquisition by TriMark. 
  
   

“Jim made a big impact at Chefs' Toys. While Jim worked quickly to to build new online revenue streams, he also looked at ways to improve the bottom line. The combined results contributed to an acceleration of our M&A efforts ultimately resulting in acquisition. Jim always has a can-do positive attitude and was a pleasure to work with. I highly recommend Jim to any company that wants to beat the competition.”

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Steve Dickler, CEO & Founder (retired)

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Big Train

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B2B Beverage Company Reinvents Itself 

Digital Strategy, Rebrand, Omnichannel eCommerce, 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. Wendt also got that 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 more easily than ever before.

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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 (retired)

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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.com

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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 to be their first employee. Wendt was offered the GM role 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 our 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 with marketing efforts, Wendt positioned the company as gaming products first, and computer products second. By adding new gaming accessories, Average Order Values increased 15%.

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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.

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David vs Goliath 

Marketing Strategy, Website Redesign, Business Development, SEO, Content Development, Events

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Kurt Thies, the Founder and CEO of Accutrac Software, had made a solid inroad into the records software space initially targeting Law Firms. Its new XE enterprise product was driving new opportunities with enterprise clients.

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The Challenge 

Several software companies were creating advanced integrations and offering SaaS-based products directly competing with Accutrac. Its largest competitors had gotten acquired by major technology companies making competition even more fierce. The company’s website had a small company feel to it.

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The Solution 

Kurt brought in Jim Wendt to assist with sales and marketing. Wendt recommended a makeover of it customer-facing messaging in order to have a stronger appeal to enterprise customers (to drive larger transactions and greater revenues). By creating all new content including whitepapers, and case studies, the company could share marketing collateral that would appeal more to a corporate client. In a website revamp, Wendt recommended emphasizing professional services and project management which did a better job of promoting the company’s strengths. In order to stand out at the undustry's largest trade show (ARMA), Wendt came up with a Nascar themed show booth concept focusing on high performace solutions.

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The Results 

Lead generation grew by 30% organically. Accutrac Software stood out from the crowd and was acquired by Iron Mountain at ARMA, the largest Records Management conference in the US.

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