Building a Retail Powerhouse With Goat Milk

When Josh Kilmer-Purcell and Brent Ridge bought an historic farmhouse in upstate New York in 2008, they planned to use it as a weekend getaway. But when the recession upended their professional lives, they rescued 100 goats and turned the farm into a business, creating goat milk soap for sensitive skin. Beekman 1802, named for the farmhouse and the year it was built, has sold over 15 million bars of soap and now offer hundreds of skincare products across multiple channels.


Beekman 1802 logo

Company

Beekman 1802

Location

Sharon Springs, N.Y.

Industry

Retail

EMPLOYEES

250-500

NUMBER OF COUNTRIES

2

SYSTEM REPLACED

QuickBooks

NETSUITE PRODUCTS IMPLEMENTED

NetSuite
Inventory Management
Demand Planning

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“NetSuite has given us full visibility into the supply chain. We know when we’re going to be out of stock, and we have mechanisms to reach out to suppliers and expedite things.” Tomei Thomas, CEO, Beekman 1802

Building a System for Long-Term Growth

Putting baby goats on television
Referring to their customers as “neighbors,” which reflected the company’s early efforts, Beekman 1802 built a loyal customer base with a mission “to spread kindness.” The company grew rapidly by expanding into multiple channels, including a store, ecommerce and hugely successful endeavors with HSN and QVC television shopping that often featured the founders with baby goats.
Trouble finding COGS
As the company grew to 250 employees and a 110,000-square-foot warehouse housing roughly 1,000 different SKUs, Beekman 1802’s existing QuickBooks and spreadsheet-based system could not provide the level of detail management needed, particularly determining the true costs of goods sold (COGS).
From three-day fulfilment to next-day
With NetSuite in place, the entire organisation has access to critical data, from neighbor services to management to the warehouse. NetSuite helped the company move from an average of three days on fulfillment to next-day, while barcode scanning has minimised shipping errors.
Expanding abroad
With NetSuite Demand Planning helping to forecast product sales, Beekman is now looking to expand into the U.K. and Australia by the end of 2021, while maintining its commitment to understanding all the details of every order it ships.

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