Barbeques Galore reduces shipping costs, increases revenue, and transforms customer experience

Barbeques Galore has been supplying Australians with high-quality barbecues since 1977. With more than 90 stores throughout Australia, Barbeques Galore lead the market in Barbeque retailing today. Plus, they now also specialize in outdoor furniture and heating.

In 2020, Barbeques Galore made the decision to implement the Fluent Order Management platform by partnering with Amblique. Since then they have:

• Rolled out Fluent Order Management across all stores
• Reduced order processing time by 49%
• Reduced orders fulfilled by DC by 12%, increasing CX and decreasing cost
• Reduced shipping dispatch times by 32%

The challenge

Before Fluent Order Management was implemented by their digital agency Amblique, Barbeques Galore was faced with high shipping costs, supply chain disruption and low stock visibility. This was impacting the customer experience. And it hampered the business’s ability to fulfill orders in a reasonable timeframe.

To deliver a better, more engaging shopping experience for customers, the team decided to invest in its digital capability. Nathan Simmons, Head of Omni-channel at Barbeques Galore, explains that there were three core areas they needed help with:

• Having near real-time visibility of inventory in our stores and other locations
• A full view of customer online and in-store orders
• Improvement to the fulfillment of our orders

We needed to be much more efficient in the way we were getting our orders out to customers. This was important for both our order fulfillment to be profitable and for our customers to receive the service they expect.

Nathan Simmons, Head of Omni-channel, Barbeques Galore

The solution

In July 2020, despite the project having to stop and start due to various COVID-19 restrictions, Barbeques Galore, alongside their integration partner Amblique, successfully rolled out Fluent Order Management across their stores and online.

Improved fulfillment efficiency

Fluent Order Management now provides Barbeques Galore with near real-time inventory reporting. The team can see exactly where their stock is. This means they can ensure products get to customers in the most efficient way.

Barbeques Galore team members can see customer orders at every stage of the fulfillment process. Whether they enquire over the phone, in-store or online, they are all in one place. Also, the pick-and-pack process of getting products out to customers from stores is now automated and far more efficient.

Accurate inventory visibility

One issue many retailers were struggling with in 2022 was a post-pandemic pile-up of inventory. The changing demand for products and supply chain disruption has left retailers with too much stock. Since the implementation of Fluent Order Management, Barbeques Galore has reduced its excess inventory levels by 30%.

Since our implementation of Fluent Order Management in the middle of 2020, we have much better visibility of our stock. In the past, our team members in stores would be making decisions based on inventory lists that were out of date. They couldn’t see what products were available which meant it was much safer to order the product in. Often, we’d already have that product in one of our warehouses, but the store staff just didn’t know.

Nathan Simmons, Head of Omni-channel, Barbeques Galore

Reduced shipping costs

Shipping costs have risen in recent years, so this was another area that the Barbeques Galore team were keen to address.

Barbeques are bulky items. They’re heavy. They cost money to move around the country. Since implementing Fluent Order Management, our time to process orders has decreased by 49%. Shipping to customers from their local stores and not relying on stock in the warehouse is much more efficient. It also reduces items being shipped interstate.

Nathan Simmons, Head of Omni-channel, Barbeques Galore

Improved customer experience

It is not only the Barbeques Galore team that benefits from an accurate view of inventory, their customers do too. Today customers can see exactly what stock is available to them and where, on the website. They can search for items and have them delivered to their home or pick them up from a store. This helps customers in store as well. If an item is unavailable in their local store, they can have the item shipped to their home or to their local store for pick up.

Previously, customers could expect to wait five days before they received their order. Now customers receive much more accurate ETA information, so they know exactly when their goods will arrive.

This is a much better experience for the customer as they know if and when they will receive their item. This means that they’re more likely to buy from us. Accessing stock in-store or online means they are less likely to go and search for similar products from our competitors.

Nathan Simmons, Head of Omni-channel, Barbeques Galore

Increased sales

Barbeques Galore rolled out Fluent Order Management in a staged approach. They started with inventory and saw results immediately.

The stores that had implemented Fluent Order Management and had their actual inventory linked to the new website experienced a significant increase in conversions. We saw an increase in eCommerce conversion rates practically overnight and a visible improvement to our Net Promoter Score.

Nathan Simmons, Head of Omni-channel, Barbeques Galore

Additional revenue streams

The integration of Fluent Order Management with Salesforce Commerce Cloud was completed by the digital agency Amblique. This has enabled Barbeques Galore to explore extra revenue streams such as dropshipping. It has also prompted the business to introduce a new third-party marketplace strategy.

Having accurate inventory visibility across all locations has made it much easier for Barbeques Galore to sell their products on marketplaces. Plus, they can now offer complementary products to customers, which can be fulfilled via Drop Ship Vendors.

The ability to sell our products outside our own stores and website has been a game changer for us. We can experiment with different amounts and locations. This is something we couldn’t do before. Our new eCommerce platform has enabled us to adapt to what our customers want, when they want it and regardless of the way they shop with us. This opened up new revenue streams and helped us reach new audiences.

Nathan Simmons, Head of Omni-channel, Barbeques Galore

The future

Following the success of their national rollout, Barbeques Galore is bringing the solution to its franchise stores. Fluent Order Management will go live in 30 franchise stores by the middle of 2024. The company is also focused on optimizing key areas of the franchise stores including the store pick-and-pack experience to further increase efficiencies.

We want to continue to improve the customer experience and focus on last-mile delivery. We’ve also partnered with Shippit and want to provide our customers with a choice of service levels. For example, if they want an item fast, they can pay to have their order prioritized.

Nathan Simmons, Head of Omni-channel, Barbeques Galore

Fluent Store, designed to manage pick, pack, shipping, pickup and returns wherever retailers store stock has been rolled out across all stores and has helped them increase staff productivity, reduce training time, order errors, and increase pick and pack efficiency.

Fluent Store allows for the configuration of a custom pick and pack process. This is crucial, as most retailers and brands know that there is no ‘one size fits all’ approach to store fulfillment. Fluent Store is the only in-store, pick-and-pack application designed to be adapted to each unique business while simultaneously allowing sellers to meet and exceed customer expectations.

We’re already getting positive feedback from our staff, saying it is taking them much less time to manage and process customer orders. That time can be spent with customers ‘in-store’ to help them choose the right product and answer any questions they may have.

Nathan Simmons, Head of Omni-channel, Barbeques Galore

The success of this project and all subsequent enhancements we’ve made to Fluent Order Management speaks for itself. We continue to trust Fluent Commerce and our partner Amblique in designing and building tailored and robust solutions to address our business’s needs today and into the future.

Nathan Simmons, Head of Omni-channel, Barbeques Galore