Running with the big dogs

Animal Supply Company is the nation's leading distributor of wholesale pet products in the US. The company supplies products from over 400 brands to 7000+ independent pet stores, online retailers, and veterinary clinics - often within one or two business days. The client experienced rapid growth with many acquisitions, and thus inherited multiple different ERP systems, warehouses, and other legacy platforms. The client was also experiencing significant disruption across their industry by key players such as Amazon and Chewy due to changing consumer shopping behaviors and along with strong category tailwinds due to trends such as the humanization of pets. This opportunity led to a vision to modernize the B2B shopping experience via online and mobile, as well as create a new Direct to Consumer business model for their retail customers to meet consumers where they shop for future growth.

Unleashing the possibilities

The client selected Allata to help define and implement the Direct to Consumer strategy, including the facilitation of the project and change management required for delivery success. Allata was responsible for recommending the selected technology solution, leading the product development, integrating with multiple existing systems, defining operational processes, managing change across the impacted functional groups, and coaching teams on new procedures. Allata wholly owned the end to end delivery for the Direct to Consumer platform. Allata also partnered with various internal and external groups to on-board new users to the platform. The platform included headless eCommerce, internal and external integrations, EDI, APIs, order management, product information management, and an online self-service portal to automate customer activation.

Paws-itive Results

Allata's solutions leveraged Animal Supply's core strength in logistics to create an entirely new business model by adding a Direct to Consumer central fulfillment platform. “Allata's digital expertise and strategic leadership allowed us to modernize and scale our B2B and B2B2C shopping experience. The Allata team provided transparency and unparalleled collaboration throughout the entirety of the project. We are grateful for the ongoing partnership," says Don McIntyre, CEO at Animal Supply Company.

With this technology and proven logistics capabilities, pet retailers traditionally selling only in brick and mortar can now compete online with the big guys. The flexible solution helped the client achieve their vision to design a platform that serves all stakeholders, large and small, based on their customer's online channel strategy.