Success Story: KAVE HOME

Kave Home experienced significant improvements in sales figures after switching to ChannelEngine as their integration solution.

Results summary:

Kave Home experienced significant improvements in sales figures after switching to ChannelEngine as their integration solution. Early estimates indicate a 105% increase in year-on-year sales compared to 2019. The primary advantages are the ease of use and the instant connection to data offered by ChannelEngine. Kave Home is pleased with the overall result, with smooth logistics and seamless order handling. Despite the unusual circumstances of 2020, the switch to ChannelEngine has proven to be a positive change, leading to increased sales and improved administrative processes.

Company Overview

Kave Home is a fast-expanding furniture and home accessory brand. The company designs, produces and sells a wide variety of high-quality items that add style and comfort to the homes of its customers. The company experienced rapid market growth during the 2000s. Starting as a small furniture company in Girona, Kave Home sells its trendy products to a vast market across Europe and is already expanding globally. By 2005, Kave Home was already selling its iconic furniture and other products in over 80 countries. The company distinguishes itself among peers with high-quality design and production processes and a flagship Kave Cares sustainability program. Kave Home has been running the Kave Cares initiative for several years now. It means the company increasingly uses recycled materials and sustainable methods to impact the environment positively. Since 2012, Kave Cares has included collections made from reclaimed wood, recycled glass, textiles made from recycled plastic, and 100% organic cotton. The company has also reduced its formaldehyde emissions by 40% and replaced traditional plywood with a zero-emissions alternative. This year the company has started to eliminate plastic-based paints from its production processes.

The Situation

Kave Home's story is one of successful and sustainable expansion. It had already made a move to expand sales via a selected range of channels, including marketplaces. However, it became apparent that the previous integration provider could not offer everything the company wanted.

Although Kave Home had already experienced multi-channel selling's positive effects, the previous integration provider was cumbersome to use, limited in capabilities, and the interface was not user-friendly.

The burden of merely handling and transferring data between systems was eroding the marketplace-selling business model's profitability. Kave Home was happy with the expanded market reach but was ready to switch to an easier and more capable integration solution.

The Solution

In 2020, ChannelEngine became the new integration partner for Kave Home – and with great success. Rob Folkers, marketplace integration specialist at Kave Home, has seen how its experience of marketplace selling improved after switching to ChannelEngine. Quite simply, "The results were really great ."According to Rob, the ability to easily connect ChannelEngine to the company ERP is a unique advantage, "Connecting the ERP to ChannelEngine was very easy. The big advantage comes from not having to worry about the connection with the marketplace selling the content is important; the connections are great with ChannelEngine, and so is the handling of incoming data too."

Kave Home has also found that the service levels in countries like the Netherlands can be relatively high. This means that customers frequently require additional support in the form of advice or returns. Sometimes it is easy to identify and address issues, but other times it is not so obvious.

The key to success is having the information. Bol.com, for example, can provide detailed reports about content and suggests improvements. Having easy access to that information makes it much easier to eliminate problems before they come up.

Next Steps

Kave Home will continue to expand sales through a carefully-selected marketplace and partnership sales program. The company is very picky about which marketplaces it sells through. Using the sales data, you can hone down exactly which products work in which situations. Kave Home currently sells over 3,000 different SKUs, so it needs to have the right data to inform these decisions. It also plans to expand to other (selected) e-commerce platforms in other countries. By connecting the Kave Home ERP to global sales channels using ChannelEngine, the company builds further on existing partnerships and creates a solid, robust foundation for future sales growth.