Caraway Case Study

Business Challenge

Caraway’s home goods make cooking easier as well as life healthier and better for thousands of customers. As news of their premium products spread, Caraway started to attract significant large retail partnerships, many of which required robust EDI services. Caraway’s previous EDI managed service provider was taking as long as 12 weeks to set up trading partners, wasn’t responsive, and lacked a modern UX which made it challenging to do EDI. This convinced Caraway to find a new partner while it upgraded its order management system during this high-growth period.

Solution

Caraway chose Orderful as its new partner with the goals of speeding up onboarding, reducing the complexity of EDI for its staff, and obtaining better customer support. Since going live with Orderful and opting to use their complete EDI managed services, Caraway has eliminated confusion and delays from its onboarding process. The company’s dedicated Orderful representative onboards new trading partners in two weeks as well as proactively monitors and fixes any EDI issues in real-time without Caraway’s intervention.

Caraway is on a mission to craft well-designed home goods that thoughtfully raise the standards of what people cook with. Its products are designed to make life easier and healthier. To continue powering the rapid growth it has experienced since launching in 2019, Caraway recently looked for ways to speed up the process of forming relationships with the big-box retailers that generate much of its business.

“We make most of our sales directly to consumers through our website and through Amazon.com,” explained Mark Riskowitz, Vice President of Operations, Caraway. “But we also sell a significant volume of products to major retailers such as Target, Costco, Crate and Barrel, and Macy’s through in-store partnerships and dropshipping.”

Caraway added its new retail partners to its network using services offered by a legacy EDI provider. But despite having professional assistance in onboarding new clients, Caraway found that the process moved slowly.

“It was taking too long for us to start conducting EDI transactions with our new clients,” said Riskowitz. “Many of our EDI partnerships took 12 weeks to go live, in part because there wasn’t clear communication about what the exact requirements were. Also, the portals and interfaces we were presented with for configuring EDI transactions looked outdated, which didn’t support our brand. And we weren’t getting a level of support that could keep up with our growth. We started looking for a partner that could move at the same speed as our business.”

Orderful’s EDI Managed Services Take the Complexity Out of Transactions

When Caraway moved to a new order management and ERP system called Fulfil, the company took the transition as a good time to reevaluate its EDI managed services needs and looked for a more modern provider. The company considered several solutions such as SPS Commerce and LogicBroker before focusing on Orderful.

“With Orderful, we were immediately intrigued by how quickly their clients can onboard new customers,” explained Riskowitz. “We also liked their rules-based engine, which provided a lot of flexibility in customizing EDI transactions. Their interface is also very attractive and intuitive.”

Even after implementing Fulfil, Caraway’s team had found themselves spending too much time in the technical depths of their EDI data. That’s why Caraway embraced Orderful’s EDI managed services offering. This solution enables Caraway’s team to focus on business transactions, setup, troubleshooting at scale, all with complete confidence that Orderful is working to keep EDI transactions running smoothly between Caraway’s Fulfil platform and the company’s customers.

Caraway now manages its EDI partnerships with just one main team member. When there is a problem with a transaction that requires input from Caraway, Orderful sends clear instructions that help prevent confusion and wasted time. Orderful also provides a lookup table that helps Caraway’s staff fill in missing shipment data quickly. “All in all, Orderful’s EDI managed services have dramatically increased our operational agility in ways that are helping us improve our speed to market with new customers,” Riskowitz confirmed. “Even after only a few months on the service, we’re already hitting all our targets for speeding up onboarding.”

Growing Manufacturer Onboards Major Retailers in 10 Days

When Caraway moved to Fulfil, it streamlined technical onboarding to four weeks per customer. Orderful’s EDI managed services have helped the company narrow that time down to as little as ten days.

Greater speed has translated to lower costs for Caraway. The company has compared the cost of running EDI transactions on Orderful versus their legacy provider and has been pleased with the results.

“Running our business with the help of Orderful’s EDI managed services is definitely more affordable,” said Riskowitz. “I calculated our EDI costs have gone down by about 30 percent, and chargebacks have become far more rare.”

As Caraway continues to grow its business, the company will rely on Orderful to scale up its EDI network seamlessly. Caraway knows that whenever a technical challenge arises, its modern EDI partner will be right there with a solution.

“The difference in support between Orderful and our previous partner is night and day,” concluded Riskowitz. “Our dedicated Solutions Engineer is incredibly responsive to our needs and creative about coming up with solutions. He takes care of most issues without needing our intervention, which frees up our lean staff to focus on providing a better customer experience and the overall ecosystem. We see our partnership with Orderful as one of the keys to our continued growth.”