Openbravo accompanies Colvin in its technological growth in the world of flowers and plants
Flexible and scalable technology solutions play a key role in the digital transformation of the retail sector.
Solutions like Openbravo WMS allow you to optimize inventory and achieve scalability even in times of high demand.
With an eCommerce strategy dedicated to flowers and plants, Colvin achieves a growth rate of 200% at the end of 2020.
Barcelona, October 20, 2021 – If the post-pandemic scenario has made one thing clear to everyone, it is that consumer habits have changed forever. The retail sector must be prepared for a new evolution in which digital transformation will be the key challenge to acquiring new customers and retaining existing ones. Online sales have grown in Spain by up to 65%, according to the latest Salesforce Shopping Indexstudy, creating new logistics challenges that need to be taken into account.
Digitizing a business does not only mean selling over the Internet, it also means providing the company with solutions that allow it to offer customers a shopping experience that meets their growing expectations.
In this sense, the digitization of inventory plays a decisive role because, thanks to automation, it improves production processes, saves time and costs, and avoids errors and delays when delivering products. Tools such as those offered by Openbravo, through its WMS solution, represent an affordable option for retailers to easily control their stock.
An example of a startup that has relied on this solution is Colvin, a Barcelona eCommerce specialized in flowers and plants that was born in 2017 with the specific goal of revolutionizing a market anchored in tradition. The industry lost up to 45% of its sales in 2020, according to the Spanish Association of Florists (AEFI).
Openbravo WMS, a solution to achieve scalability in record time
Colvin has not stopped growing in an industry that is being joined by a new wave of young buyers, who prioritize online consumption over traditional consumption. Colvin recognized that they needed an easy-to-use and agile tool that would allow them to have a scalable business and ensure the customer experience remained intact, even in times of high demand.
Openbravo WMS has turned out to be a great ally for the company because it has enabled them to better monitor all products, both inbound and outbound, and manage stock in real-time, which is vital to optimize the life of flowers and plants.
Thanks to this technology, Colvin has been able to record the movements of all the products and to know where each flower was delivered and where it came from, which has enabled the company to quickly identify the supplier in case of potential quality problems.
“Before the decision to implement Openbravo, we managed operations at Colvin with proprietary software, but as the complexity of the business has grown, it has become increasingly difficult for us to keep it updated according to our needs. For this reason, we decided to look for a commercial solution that would allow us to have our standard processes developed, without losing the flexibility we need to adapt it to the online flower and plant business.” said Pol Lligoña, Head of Global Operations at Colvin.
Constant growth in a challenging context
Like all eCommerce businesses, during the pandemic period, Colvin experienced a significant growth in demand that led them to double their turnover, achieving a growth rate of 200% by the end of 2020.
What began as a small online business with long-term growth expectations, has managed, since its inception, to raise close to €70 million culminating most recently with €45 million in a Series C financing round. This success recognizes the solidity of a growing enterprise that aims to expand the B2C business in Europe, invest in its marketplace and expand the team up to 300 people in the coming months.
With the investment raised, they hope to enter new markets in the short term, while continuing to invest in the B2B market.
A Future marked by Artificial Intelligence
After emerging as a disruptive idea in the flower and plant sector, technological innovation will continue to be one of the pillars of the Barcelona company with a presence also in Italy, Portugal and Germany.
But the real challenge for the sector will be to bring Artificial Intelligence to the production centers and machine vision technology that will enable it to detect possible defects or diseases of live plants that go unnoticed by the human eye, so improving quality control processes.
In short, Colvin is an example of a retail company that finds in digital technology an opportunity to innovate and grow its business exponentially, attracting new customers with the quality of its services and offering an unbeatable shopping experience, thanks to flexible and scalable solutions like those proposed by Openbravo.
If you want to know more, read the complete customer story of Colvin with Openbravo here.
About Openbravo
Openbravo is the omnichannel software platform of choice for brands and retailers seeking to accelerate their digital transformation and omnichannel strategy. Flexible, cloud-based and mobile-enabled, it allows integration between the online and offline channels, personalized, convenient and safer store shopping experiences, as well as intelligent order management with a single and real-time view of inventory. International brands like Decathlon, BUT, Caroll, Rubaiyat, Sharaf DG, Toys “R” Us Iberia, and Zôdio prefer Openbravo, which today counts over 18,000 back-office users and 60,000 points of sale terminals.
To know more visit openbravo.com