IN-SYNCH Turbocharges Sweet Manufacturing’s Ecommerce Engine
For companies with thousands of products, keeping accurate inventory and pricing can be an almost impossible task. That was the challenge facing Sweet Manufacturing, the largest manufacturer of steering parts for racecars and other high-performance vehicles. With a complex tiered pricing system and over 2,000 products for sale to both distributors and consumers, manual updates to their ecommerce platform became unsustainable.
Thankfully, Sweet Manufacturing invested in IN-SYNCH. Read on to find out how this Sage 100 integration software transformed the company’s ecommerce experience for employees and customers alike.
High Quality Parts for High Performance Vehicles
In 1963, Randy Sweet started racing with a 1946 Ford sedan. Over the next decade, he raced—and won!—with custom-built cars across the country. In 1978, Randy launched Sweet Manufacturing, selling his innovative car parts. The company specialized in power steering components. Randy continued racing for the next 30 years, developing, testing, and improving the parts his company manufactured.
Today, Sweet Manufacturing continues Randy’s legacy by providing the highest-quality steering and safety components for small-track racecars. The company, based in Kalamazoo, Michigan, now has over 40 employees. Their customer base includes both distributors and consumers in the U.S., Europe, Australia, and Africa.
With Growth Comes Complexity
As Sweet Manufacturing grew, their operation rapidly became more complex, especially given their international customer base. In 2010, they set up an ecommerce platform to display some of their product lines. However, that website had extremely limited utility: it had no integration whatsoever with their Sage 100 ERP.
Josh Wilkins, the executive vice president of operations and IT, recalls, “our old site was only a fraction of what we sell: just the most popular products—the things we took the time to actually put out there. If we had any sort of pricing change, that all had to be done manually. Customers had no way to know if anything was in stock.”
But it gets worse! In 2023, Sweet Manufacturing’s ecommerce website stopped working entirely. They rapidly shifted to WooCommerce, creating both an ecommerce storefront and a B2B portal for selling to distributors. They also decided that it was time to make another change: integrating their ecommerce platform and their Sage 100 ERP.
Off to the Races
Over the past ten years, Venturi has significantly grown their Amazon offerings, added eBay and Walmart merchant channels, and expanded fulfillment. They also replatformed to WooCommerce with ERP integration. “It’s hard to quantify the value IN-SYNCH and the team has had on our business, but without Sage 100 ecommerce integration we wouldn’t be able to keep up with the volume,” explained Westfield.
“The automation allows us to grow sales without growing the customer service staff. The integration works so well, Venturi staff can focus their time on providing a better customer service experience because the orders on time and accurate. Automation allows us to gain efficiencies and add benefits, such as offering same-day shipping for orders placed by 1:00 pm Eastern. We wouldn’t be able to do that without real-time integration.”
Because the IN-SYNCH solution works so well, and integration is available to multiple shopping carts, Venturi has the freedom to continue grow its business into more and more marketplaces.
Shifting Into a New Gear with IN-SYNCH
Sweet Manufacturing has been using IN-SYNCH’s integration for about a year now. “Everything functions exactly how we want it to,” Wilkins says. “The updated pricing is great. If we change something or find a mistake on pricing, we just make a change in Sage and it automatically changes it on the site. That’s really helpful. Most of the information about our products in Sage is pushed directly to the site. I don’t need to go into the site and manually enter everything if we come up with a new product. If it’s in Sage, it’s there.”
Wilkins says that their dealers and distributors are also happy with the new ecommerce experience. He recommends IN-SYNCH to any ecommerce company with a high volume of products, commenting, “if you have a website and you have a lot of products, IN-SYNCH is invaluable. It does exactly what we want it to. It just does its thing in the background and everything has worked great.”
Ready to Speed Up Your Own Ecommerce?
Sweet Manufacturing’s story shows the value of integration between a company’s ecommerce website and their ERP. Integration can save hours upon hours of manual data entry and repetitive customer communication. If you’re looking for Sage 100 integration, the IN-SYNCH team can create a customized, seamless solution that meets your unique business needs. Contact us today to get started!
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