Ice Breaker  

Ice breaker is on a journey to become 100% plastic free and are 96.14% of the way there. They lead innovation with tools that nature provides to craft timeless, versatile pieces that are designed to withstand the test of time. They aim to be 100% plastic free by 2028 and are steadfast in their commitment.  

Crag Hoppers  

Crag Hoppers has worked alongside the Galapagos Conservation Trust (GCT) for 5 years now to aid in land and sea protection against plastic pollution. Over the last year their contribution to GCT has allowed them to designate shark and ray nursery sites, track whale sharks, and fight against pollution and illegal fishing on the Galapagos beaches. Read more about where their donations go to help protect our marine life.  

Cotopaxi  

Cotopaxi has gained recognition not only for their exceptional products but also for their unwavering commitment to sustainability. As a certified B-Corp since 2015, they exemplify responsible business practices. To prioritize sustainability, they’ve committed to using recycled, repurposed, or responsibly sourced materials in all their products by 2025. They have also transitioned all retail stores to renewable energy and offer ways for consumers to shop for repurposed and recycled gear. Read more about how Cotopaxi has shaped their business to be sustainable by design here.  

Nemo 

Sustainability lies at the heart of Nemo Equipment’s mission. Making an impact for people and the planet, they strive for innovation in creating products that use fewer resources and last longer to keep gear out of the landfill. In their push to hold themselves accountable for carbon emissions, Nemo has realized a 22% reduction in emissions and hopes to cut all carbon emissions in half by 2030. Read more about how they’re striving to make adventure forever.  

Elastic

Elastic Suite is committed to enabling our brand partners to adopt more environmentally responsible business practices. This is done through two methods within the wholesale and B2B commerce space – eliminating print and encouraging more thoughtful ordering.

By switching to digital catalogs, order forms and workbooks, brands can save thousands of invaluable, non-renewable resources. We’ve partnered with the Environmental Paper Network to build a calculator that helps brands realize how much they’re saving by eliminating printed catalogs.

The value of switching to digital solutions is exponential as brands who use Elastic’s ecommerce solutions can help their reps, distributors and retailers create more thoughtful assortments and reduce overproduction and unsold products. Multiship assortments and specialized order segmentation help retailers buy exactly what they need, when they need it, eliminating overstock and rushed orders.  Read more about the value of switching to digital B2B and wholesale commerce in our white paper.

The post Celebrating Earth Day 2024: Brands Making a Difference appeared first on Elastic Suite.

Enhanced Calls-to-Action on Marquee

The marquee is the first thing customers see when placing orders, and Elastic Suite has made it even more effective in capturing their attention with branded marketing assets and billboard-like calls-to-actions and buttons. With eye-catching calls to action, brands can provide valuable information and incentives, more effectively engaging their audience. When linked directly to an open-to-buy catalog or collection, the Shop Now button has an average 30% conversion rate.

Customer Information Widget at Checkout

At the critical checkout stage, the new Customer Information Widget streamlines the process, making it easier and more efficient for customers to complete their purchase. By simplifying this crucial step, Elastic Suite ensures a smoother transition from browsing to buying, reducing cart abandonment rates.  

The new dashboard functionality allows brands to communicate important information like credit limit or data, contact details, or account information. Because of advanced ship dates or inventory availability variances, communication with the customer post-purchase is also critical. 

With these updates, Elastic Suite empowers brands to move from chaos toward conversion, with tools and solutions that simplify, not distract from the B2B or wholesale commerce process. Learn even more about other solutions within the Elastic toolset that improve B2B conversion rates.

The post How customer communication helps with B2B commerce conversion rates appeared first on Elastic Suite.

Customization is Key

In B2B transactions, buyers often place substantial preseason orders with multiple complexities like various ship dates and locations. To streamline this process, customization is essential. By providing pre-built assortments, curated collections or order proposals, sales reps can significantly reduce friction in the path-to-purchase. In fact, 73% of customers expect a personalized commerce experience. Buyers appreciate a tailored approach that caters to their specific needs, making them more likely to convert.

Dashboard Optimization

Brands that invest in optimizing their Elastic dashboard can see remarkable results, with conversion rates increasing by almost 30%. Simple yet effective calls-to-action (CTA) on the marquee, such as a “Shop Now” button leading buyers directly to the pre-season catalog, can eliminate time spent browsing and searching, especially when they know exactly what they’re going to order. This intuitive approach propels buyers into order-building mode, increasing the likelihood of conversion.

Fast and Seamless Ordering

For At-Once, ATS or Reorders ease-of-use is paramount. Elastic Suite’s SKU-level product search functionality simplifies the process, allowing buyers to efficiently fulfill their orders. Quick and easy access to products minimizes friction, making the conversion process smoother and more efficient. Efficiency is more important than ever as reorder value more than doubled from 2021 to 2022.

Integrated Email Marketing Campaigns

One of the most direct ways to push buyers closer to conversion, especially for at-once or reorder scenarios, is through integrated email marketing campaigns. By communicating directly with buyers through email, you can inform them about discounts, inventory availability, and deadlines. These emails can be strategically designed to direct recipients to specific order proposals or catalogs, eliminating the need for extensive browsing or searching. According to recent data, it takes 8 brand touchpoints before a buyer will place an order, by linking them directly from their inbox to a proposed order, you can eliminate 3 of those crucial touchpoints (Elastic login, product search and order placement).

The insights gathered from various sources emphasize that while B2B and B2C ecommerce may differ in certain aspects, the fundamentals of conversion optimization remain consistent. Customization, user-friendly dashboards, streamlined ordering processes, and targeted email campaigns are all essential strategies for success.

To learn more about how Elastic Suite can help your brands’ B2B ecommerce conversion, request a discovery session with our team.

Data Sources:

• Retail Touchpoints
• Vaekst

The post Optimizing B2B & Wholesale Ecommerce Conversion Rates: Strategies for Success appeared first on Elastic Suite.

Being one of the most popular direct-to-consumer (D2C) ecommerce tools on the market, it’s no surprise many brands turn to Shopify to help scale their wholesale business. However, Shopify Plus for B2B does not come without its shortcomings for true enterprise brands… especially around its limited scalability. The approach of a blended ecommerce experience means the tool mirrors the D2C experience through a B2B lens, creating “blended commerce.” Large or multi-brand enterprises require more customizable and robust features and integrations to handle their complexities and points of chaos. Additionally, because of the one-to-one nature of wholesale sales, curation and segmentation is key for a successful enterprise sales strategy. Custom presentation features are built into Elastic’s core feature set while not being part of a standard D2C ecommerce experience offered by Shopify. 

Improving pre-season sales with purpose-built B2B features

Elastic Suite’s B2B-focused features offer sophisticated solutions required by enterprise brands such as complex pricing structures, tiered discounts, and advanced inventory management capabilities. Purpose-built wholesale solutions allow enterprises to tailor their B2B experience according to their user’s unique requirements, rather than mirroring standard (albeit simpler) D2C commerce.  

The greatest difference between Elastic’s true B2B experience and Shopify’s more elementary commerce tool is the sales rep’s ability to curate and tailor their sales presentations, especially for preseason orders. Elastic’s Custom Catalog Builder, Assortment Planner, and Whiteboards were developed for reps to elevate their sales presentations beyond printed workbooks and digital product detail pages. Sellers can customize their entire (meaning before, during, and after) in-person or virtual line showings. This improves order sizes by increasing both the breadth and depth of the preseason buy. 

Below are some key differentiators between Shopify’s blended (D2C + B2B) tool and Elastic’s purpose-built wholesale solution.  

Enterprise growth is built on optimized and integrated back-end systems

Integration of front-end commerce and backend ERPs is necessary for B2B commerce because of the complicated nature of wholesale sales (pricing, shipping, future vs. available inventory and so many more data points).  Elastic’s expertise lies in data and systems integration, with best-in-class solutions for creating streamlined efficiencies. While Shopify does have API integrations with popular ERPs, Elastic’s two-way data syncs create backend automations, rather than just populating product or customer data. And since each enterprise operates their ERP differently, a deep understanding of the custom data requirements is required to prevent siloed and disparate data.  

Shopify Plus for B2B is an efficient self-service tool for dealers. The blended tool does have features and capabilities for an omnichannel manufacturer with a growing wholesale strategy. But Elastic Suite’s true B2B experience is designed for a robust wholesale strategy that includes bolstering relationships with retailers, and curation and personalization for elevated sales.  

If you’re using Shopify’s wholesale solutions and looking for a scalable and enterprise-focused experience, explore Elastic Suite.  

The post Elastic Suite provides Wholesale B2B Experience to Enterprise Brands ready to grow beyond blended ecommerce appeared first on Elastic Suite.

Artilect

One of the most important ways for brands to reduce their environmental footprint is to create products that last. High-quality, durable materials mean that consumers have to buy less often, reducing waste and production resources. Artilect Studios creates highly technical products designed to be used over and over, across seasons and activities. In partnership with YKK, they are introducing repairable zipper technology in the 3L Formation shell and High AF Down Strech Parka. Because they are not usually repairable at home by the consumer, a broken or damaged zipper is the most common cause for returning or buying a new garment. By creating a zipper solution that any wearer can repair, Artilect is helping to keep their products in use for even longer. Read more about YKK & ARTILECT’s innovation

tentree

Sustainability is at tentree’s core, with every purchase planting 10 trees in ecosystems across the globe. Each piece of clothing is designed and produced with environmental impact in mind, including ethical manufacturing. Their recently launched line, Undyed Pallette, is created with fibers in their most natural, undyed and unprocessed state. Eliminating the need to dye fabrics reduces chemical pollution and water waste using 40% less water and 33% less electricity to process each garment. Read more about the Undyed Pallette from tentree here.

Helly Hansen

Helly Hansen will use PrimaLoft’s new Insulation with Ocean Bound Plastic. The high-performance material is produced with 100% post-consumer recycled content, with 60% of the material coming from wasted plastic bottles sourced within 50 kilometers/30 miles of coastal areas. Using ocean-bound materials not only prevents marine contamination but produces a high-quality, professional-grade product. Read more about PrimaLoft & Helly Hansen’s revolutionary product here. Helly Hansen will add the ocean-bound plastic technology to the ski category for 2023, on top of their existing product line for sailing.

“We are thrilled to introduce PrimaLoft Insulation with Ocean Bound Plastic to our ski category, allowing us to maintain our goal to provide professional grade gear to help people stay and feel alive, while supporting the positive environmental impact efforts of PrimaLoft and OceanCycle.”

-Øyvind Vedvik, VP Ski, Sailing & R&D, Helly Hansen

Patagonia

Patagonia is equally known for their mission as they are their products. Their newest effort towards sustainability is in the activism space, creating a non-profit that will raise funds for fighting climate change in fragile regions and ecosystems. While production and manufacturing creates the largest portion of carbon emissions, the most-impacted environments, and people, use these goods the least. Patagonia is extending their fight against the climate crises with the creation of the Home Planet Fund. The organization raises funds to serve the regions that are most impacted by the crisis. Read more about the Home Planet Fund and Patagonia’s other ecological impact efforts here.

“With the climate ecological crisis in the position that it’s in, and the vast amount of work that we need to do in the apparel industry….we wanted our message to be more a call to action for our mission statement. We’re in business to save our home planet.”

-Aileen Ottenweller, Head of Brand & Business Impact, Patagonia

Nidecker

Nidecker built sustainability into their core business model by focusing on sustainable and ethical production, adopting a 1% giveback model but also by creating a community activism program called Stash the Trash. Each summer, Nidecker empowers their own team members and their global riders to gather friends and family to clean up recreational spaces like trails, beaches and riverbanks, in partnership with the Swiss Summit Foundation. You can read more about how to set up your own Stash The Trash Clean Up day here.

Elastic

Elastic Suite is committed to enabling our brand partners to adopt more environmentally responsible business practices. This is done through two methods within the wholesale and B2B commerce space – eliminating print and encouraging more thoughtful ordering.

By switching to digital catalogs, order forms and workbooks, brands can save thousands of invaluable, non-renewable resources. We’ve partnered with the Environmental Paper Network to build a calculator that helps brands realize how much they’re saving by eliminating printed catalogs.

The value of switching to digital solutions is exponential as brands who use Elastic’s ecommerce solutions can help their reps, distributors and retailers create more thoughtful assortments and reduce overproduction and unsold products. Multiship assortments and specialized order segmentation help retailers buy exactly what they need, when they need it, eliminating overstock and rushed orders.  Read more about the value of switching to digital B2B and wholesale commerce in our white paper.

The post Celebrating Earth Day 2023 appeared first on Elastic Suite.

“Elastic has taken our experience and innovation from serving a large portfolio of leading global brands and optimized the technology for the distributor wholesale merchandising model. Adoption of the platform by distributors is helping accelerate the growth of collaborative commerce across a diverse group of manufacturing verticals, brands, and specialty retailers.”

-Josh Reddin, EVP & Founder, Elastic Suite

Value for buyers & sellers

Brands, manufacturers, and distributors are creating more strategic relationships and streamlined selling processes with their retail partners through the Elastic B2B solution. Distributors play an important role in the adoption of technology through their multiple supplier relationships across a broad network of retailers. The distributor model creates easier access to the very best brands for buyers, and centralizing their commerce builds even more value. Retailers and buyers can access an entire distributor’s catalog of brands in one login, allowing for easier and more strategic buying. 

By centralizing the selling process for distributors, Elastic is moving commerce from transactional to transformational – emphasizing relationship-building rather than manual order entry processes. The value of a B2B is especially apparent for distributors because centralizing product data, pricing and catalogs helps to build strategic and segmented sales plans for buyers. Instead of disparate catalogs and inventory management across brands, distributors can create a much more holistic approach to B2B commerce.

The post Elastic Brings a More Strategic and Efficient Wholesale Process to Distributors appeared first on Elastic Suite.

A collective of 25 independent sales and marketing agencies representing over 175 outdoor and active lifestyle brands, the OMA has emerged as a collaborative epicenter among outdoor industry brands, sales agencies, retailers, and more recently, media. It’s also a year-round destination for outdoor specialty retailers and their buyers who can now visit and do business in one convenient and permanent location, any day of the year.

“Our founding vision at OMA has always been one of new connections and new ways of doing things. We house dozens of sales reps and host hundreds of retail buyers looking for best-in-class solutions for getting business done as efficiently as possible. We’re excited to be working with Elastic as our preferred sales platform partner, and welcoming their team to interface with our brands and retailers both digitally and in-person at our market weeks and at future onsite events.” 

–Axel Geittmann, president and founding board member of OMA

The OMA also hosts seasonal market weeks for its respective retailers to gather and plan their purchasing, with the next OMA Summer Market Week slated for June 5th-9th, 2023. Retailers and their buyers can learn more here.

“This partnership with OMA will allow us to connect with our power users on a more regular cadence. Just as OMA is available for the support and efficiency of retail buyers, Elastic can provide hands-on training for reps, helping to elevate their sales processes by optimizing the Elastic platform. It’s a win-win for everyone.” 

-Josh Reddin, EVP and founder of Elastic

 

About Outdoor Market Alliance

Outdoor Market Alliance is a collective of 25 independent sales and marketing agencies representing over 175 different brands in the outdoor, active lifestyle, resort, run and bike markets in the Rockies. Located in Lakewood, Colorado, the OMA physical location offers 32,000 square feet of showroom and community meeting space. OMA’s mission is two-fold: to elevate the experience for its brand partners and retailers through a fresh showroom venue, while acting responsibly to support community initiatives through its non-profit association. Each OMA agency commits time and monetary support to the environment, diversity and inclusivity in the outdoor markets. Learn more at www.outdoormarketalliance.org 

The post Outdoor Market Alliance and Elastic Suite Announce Strategic Partnership  appeared first on Elastic Suite.

Technology- Enabled B2B & “Hole-Sale”

Elastic’s next-generation B2B platform has emerged as the most preferred wholesale purchasing and merchandising technology among brands across numerous lifestyle, recreation and sporting goods verticals. In addition to brands such as TravisMathew, G&G Golf, ACI Brands and Puma Cobra serving the golf sector, Elastic helps manufacturers, retailers and distributors adopt a more sustainable approach to B2B sales while achieving efficiency-driven cost savings and incremental sales growth.

Keeping up with Demand through Digital B2B

Brands such as Swannies and Vuori aren’t just succeeding, but instead are growing rapidly with no end in sight. By becoming technology-enabled they and other leading golf brands are able to meet this growth through a single-platform commerce experience, creating a more streamlined purchasing process than ever before.

After implementing digital B2B sales process, golf brands have benefitted heavily from their investment. Over the course of 2019 to 2021 various golf brands using Elastic saw a 131.76% increase in the number of orders placed yearly, while each the average cart value also increased by 28.5%* Not only are these brands selling more orders at a higher value, but they’re also opening more retail doors than before they began using Elastic.

*Based on Elastic’s own Business Intelligence & Analytics tracking

The Future of Golf B2B

This feature-rich approach to conducting wholesale business is revolutionizing the way the golf industry operates and evolving it into a technology-enabled industry. Elastic’s reach into the golf industry has brought on a partnership with the Association of Golf Merchandisers (AGM) as the Presenting Diamond Level Sponsor of AGM’s Certified Retail Management Program, one of the association’s key educational resources for golf retailers.

As the market continues to grow and evolve, manufacturers, independent reps, distributors and retailers will now be able to meet demand through streamlined sales processes, and order placing and management efficiencies.

The post Exploding Consumer Demands Tees up the Golf Industry for the Next Wave of Technology-Enabled Wholesale appeared first on Elastic Suite.

ACI joined Elastic in October of 2021 to bring streamlined sales and digital merchandising to their rep force and coinciding retail partners. The team of 6 regional, independent reps serves hundreds of retail partners across Canada from green grass pro shops to off-course specialty retailers to multi-national retail accounts. Since their kickoff, reps have placed 1,090 orders with over 57,020 units sold.

Efficiencies for reps, retailers and customer success

The sales leadership team at ACI decided to move their processes over to a digital B2B to better serve their sales reps. By providing in-depth information, all in one place, Elastic is helping reps better serve their customers. Product information, pricing, and up-to-date inventory are all housed within Elastic, so users don’t have to look in multiple places for necessary information. By streamlining processes and housing information in a central location, brands can increase B2B sales by up to 21%.

Brooke Bauer, ACI’s Director of Golf and Apparel said that “Elastic Suite is first and foremost a tool we’re using for our reps to enter orders through but also for them to gather information and create tools to better serve their customers.”

When evaluating B2B platforms and considering Elastic, the main factor was familiarity with and feedback from their reps. Since some of ACI’s main competitors are already on Elastic, the independent reps already knew and loved the ease of use of the platform. Antigua Apparel’s US operations also just joined the Elastic family of brands, making commerce with that brand that much easier as well!

Improving retail relationships

ACI Brands’ independent reps currently provide a white-glove level of service for the retail partners they serve. They use Elastic to provide product information, inventory counts, and product availability and to ultimately, place orders. Digital merchandising, assortment building, and strategic order placing are all possible through the Elastic platform. This helps reps customize the order proposal for a specific retailer, especially for high dollar, high SKU-count pre-season bookings.

ACI plans to roll out Elastic to their retail partners in 2023 to provide a quicker, self-service model for at-once and ATS orders. Retailers can place quick orders themselves, to help keep product on shelves during the busiest selling seasons.

ACI Brands is also seeing cross-functional efficiencies in their customer service department. Prior to using Elastic’s digital B2B, reps used Excel order forms to build complicated orders and pricing structures. These spreadsheets were then handed off to the customer service department for processing. But with Elastic, reps can build a much cleaner order confirmation form, saving customer service department time spent on manual order entry processes.

Segmented and customized selling solutions

The most popular feature within the Elastic platform is custom collections. Because retailers typically like to buy the way they sell, reps can build custom collections and order proposals based on product attribute. This puts the buying process in the way the buyer likes to assort, merchandise, and sell. By visually merchandising the order, reps can help the buyers envision product mixes, just the way they’d be on the shelf or rack inside the store.

Another Elastic feature that ACI is taking advantage of is the Links area of the New Elastic Dashboard. By putting all necessary sales assets and information in one centralized place, reps can quickly self-serve by accessing all the information they need. This streamlines internal communication for ACI and provides a quick and easy selling experience for the reps.

“Automating and the ability to modify and bulk upload data was a key consideration for choosing Elastic” IT Applications Manager, Michael Douglas, said.“These tools are essential to update product information from season to season.” Also, a key factor in their decision to partner with Elastic, ACI’s team needed the flexibility to segregate and organize data by region or rep. This filtered view is imperative for the rep’s segmented sales strategies.

To learn more about how Elastic can help your team:

The post Leading Distributor of Golf products, ACI Brands, finds continued success with Elastic Suite’s digital B2B commerce appeared first on Elastic Suite.

Elastic Suite, a global leader in B2B ecommerce technology and subsidiary of Emerald Holding, Inc. (NYSE:EEX), today announced a major partnership agreement with the Association of Golf Merchandisers (AGM). The agreement provides AGM member retailers with access to Elastic’s wealth of experience in digital merchandising, large network of major global brand partners and the company’s expertise for helping retailers benefit from a more strategic and streamlined wholesale purchasing process. The new partnership names Elastic Suite as the Presenting Diamond Level Sponsor of AGM’s Certified Retail Management Program, one of the association’s key educational resources for golf retailers.

“Putting our next-generation B2B ecommerce platform to work for the golf industry is an incredible opportunity for Elastic and AGM member retailers alik. Our digital merchandising technology is unmatched in bringing new levels of process efficiency, cost savings, sales growth and sustainability to both the wholesale buyer and seller. Golf retailers and brands will now have preferred access to all these benefits and unmatched education through this new partnership.”

–Josh Reddin, Founder & EVP, Elastic Suite

Transforming Golf into a Technology-enabled Industry

AGM and Elastic will jointly develop new educational components for the Certified Retail Management Program specifically tailored for golf industry retailers. The programming will include live webinar sessions where attendees can tap Elastic’s expertise on B2B ecommerce topics while learning about the latest in merchandising and retail best practices. Additional educational content customized specifically for the golf industry will be created and shared with AGM members. Elastic platform users outside of the channel will also gain access to some of AGM’s industry-agnostic best practice education.

“Helping golf retailers adopt the latest and most advanced wholesale merchandising technology is critically important to our industry as a whole. We have found the most qualified partner in Elastic Suite to help us do that at the highest level and look forward to adding the many resources they will provide for the benefit of our retail members.” 

-Jennifer Morton, President, AGM

By partnering with and learning from the core buyers in this channel, Elastic is leading the way in driving the renaissance in retail. Each industry has nuances and complexities and by starting with the retail experience, Elastic is engineering solutions specifically designed for golf manufacturers that will ultimately lead to a technology-enabled industry. Elastic’s growing list of golf brand partners includes names like TravisMathew, Callaway, and Cobra Puma.

Elastic Suite helps manufacturers, retailers and distributors adopt a more sustainable approach to B2B sales while achieving efficiency-driven cost savings and incremental sales growth. Sustainability and cost savings come through streamlined order entry, digital catalogs, resource optimization, and inventory management. Increased sales revenues come through brand-specific retailer applications, sales rep tools, strategic sales planning, digital merchandising, product customization, and assortment planning tools.

About Elastic Suite

Elastic Suite’s next-generation B2B technology serves clients representing hundreds of the world’s largest and most iconic brands in the golf, surf, outdoor, cycling, sporting goods, apparel, lifestyle and footwear industries. Selected brands served include Callaway, TravisMathew, The North Face, Patagonia, K2, Thule, Marker, Dalbello, Völkl, Active Brands, Shimano, Spyder, Boardriders, RipCurl, Volcom, O’Neill, Quiksilver, Vans, Scott Sports, New Balance, Puma, Reebok/CCM and Burton. Elastic Suite is a subsidiary of Emerald Holding, Inc., a global leader in hosting tradeshows and sales events.

About AGM

The Association of Golf Merchandisers is an international, professional association consisting of more than 850 buyer members, 50 student members and over 160 Vendor Partners all dedicated to strengthening the golf merchandising industry. AGM buyer members are responsible for the retail operations at over 1,500 golf shops with annual sales in excess of $1 billion. These members, both the Merchandisers and the Vendor Partners, are among the best and most recognized in the golf industry.

Download the full press release here >>

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