Enterprise Times met with Nick Parece, VP IT at NOBULL at SuiteWorld 2024 in Las Vegas. The company is a direct-to-consumer (D2C) brand that initially offered a small selection of training footwear, apparel and accessories. It has since grown to offering 26,000 product SKUs across a wide range of sports including, cycling, swimming and golf. As a result, the company has grown rapidly over the last 4-5 years.
The conversation revolved around the NOBULL’s transition from using Excel and QuickBooks to NetSuite solutions. The shift to NetSuite aimed to streamline operations and enhance scalability. Parece highlighted the challenges and benefits of the change. The discussion also touched on the impact of COVID-19, the significance of partnerships, and the necessity of focusing on unique business aspects rather than commodity items. Nick Parece outlined his top four tips for brands looking to develop a D2C channel to support business growth.
1. Create an infrastructure
This may sound simplistic, but businesses need to have the infrastructure in place to support business growth. At NOBULL we selected known suppliers for all our key technical components. In our case, this was Shopify / NetSuite and then partnered with Celigo to ensure the effectiveness of the software that connects them together.
2. Focus on the USP
Businesses must focus on what makes them special. Buy commodity, the stuff that is commodity, and which let you make the magic on the edges. We have a number of partnerships that enables the teams to focus on their business. For instance, the fulfilment is managed by 3PL. This enables our employees to focus on the core business.
3. Empathy goes a long way
Change is uncomfortable for many organisations and people – employees, suppliers and partners. Getting people into new ways of working is one of the biggest challenges a business can face.
Therefore businesses need to bring people along in that transformation journey and explain the purpose and objectives. This is the ambitions: here is where you fit in the process and why this is important. Keep the messaging simple and partner early with your most difficult employees. Engage with individuals who may not be enthusiastic about the change. As soon as you bring people along the journey, it brings down some of those barriers.
4. Define how the business will measure success
At its most simplest level, success may mean remaining friends with other colleagues and stakeholders. Is there integration between applications around the platform? The second thing is our financial goals. Can our finance and accounting applications sustain the growth achieved during the last few years.
