Houzer Builds Ideal Tech Stack with BigCommerce and Feedonomics

SOLUTION

Achieving speed to launch with Coalition Technologies.

With the support of Coalition and BigCommerce, Houzer was able to launch its DTC site in less than 60 days — an undeniable feat.

“I've been with Coalition for six years and we've never moved that fast and stood something up that was presentation-ready — not even just live, but ready for a presentation at a conference to an audience of people,” said Cross.

Direct-to-consumer may have been a new business model for Houzer, but luckily for Coalition, “That's our bread and butter,” said Holt. With a wealth of experience building both lead generation and ecommerce sites, Coalition was able to migrate Houzer’s website to BigCommerce and import its products onto the store.

But Coalition also admits that much of its success can be attributed to BigCommerce’s support.

“The platform itself enables a very quick standup of a fully functional V1 of their site,” explained Holt. “Utilizing BigCommerce allowed us to bypass a lot of that initial lift and focus on the parts that typically would come later. That enabled us to take this legacy brand and build an entirely new site with an entirely new business model in six weeks.”

Serving the omnichannel experience with Feedonomics.

“If you’re a brand that’s selling across omnichannel and aspires to sell direct-to-consumer, or if you're a brand with complex products or complex customers, there's nothing else but BigCommerce and Feedonomics,” said Challinger.

In his search for an omnichannel platform, Challinger knew Houzer needed a solution that could syndicate product data to various partners and integrate with a variety of marketplaces. With the ability to manage products and orders across over 100 channels, Feedonomics gave Houzer the power to drive omnichannel growth — without the high price tag.

“I was saving colossal amounts of money. I was able to consolidate everything into one tech stack, rather than dealing with the complexities of making different systems communicate with each other,” said Challinger. “There’s huge value in having one sword to slay all monsters."

Additionally, Challinger found a huge value-add in BigCommerce and Feedonomics’ managed services. With a small team and limited resources, Houzer needed a solution that would allow Houzer to focus less on managing its channels and more on what matters most: growing their business.

“Saving a person and a half is non-trivial because that's one and a half humans that can now focus on growth instead of focusing on doing things they shouldn't have to be doing, such as iterating a process that's a solved problem for most companies,” said Challinger. “At the end of the day, I don't expect to have to ever add another resource to deal with feed management internally. If anything, I've reduced the resources that we're spending on it.”

Freedom to choose best-in-breed.

In addition to omnichannel capabilities, another deciding factor for Challinger was BigCommerce’s partner ecosystem. Selling largely on Amazon and a number of other marketplaces, Houzer needed a platform that would provide freedom of choice and seamless integrations.

“There's wide freedom to be able to work with whoever you want. You're not forced into any one direction,” explained Challinger. “But the bigger the big value, in my opinion, is the degree of access and fervor that BigCommerce puts into each of those partnerships.”

Rather than pushing proprietary services and value-adds, BigCommerce enabled Houzer to choose best-in-breed technologies that aligned with their business needs. Buy with Prime, ZenDesk, AfterShip, and Bazaarvoice are just a few of the integrations that Houzer is using to build up its site.

“I can't express eloquently enough how much value I've already seen from the partnerships that BigCommerce and Feedonomics have, and they're just really getting started,” said Challinger. “They're bringing on more partners all the time, and they’re deepening the partnerships they already have.”