A fitting solution
For more than two decades, the professionals at Masterfit Enterprises have been helping athletes increase their comfort and performance. The company originally began by training sports shop sales personnel on how to fit ski boots and snowboard boots for customers, with a focus on insoles and other fit aids.
Eventually, the Masterfit Enterprises team realized that with their expertise, they could make their own products for the market, instead of sourcing from other businesses. Today, Masterfit Enterprises manufactures insoles and fit aids that can be found in hundreds of resort shops and sporting goods stores, including REI Co-op and Vail Resorts, as well as on Amazon. Its products range from drop-in insoles to fully custom insoles molded to an individual’s feet.
“We really started from the ground up,” said Brian Frias, Brand and Technology Manager at Masterfit Enterprises. “Our primary market is the winter sports industry, but in the last ten years, we’ve also branched out into running, hiking, and biking with our products.”
Mr. Frias emphasized that the company is still a true small business. “We’re a group of eight full-time employees, and another 15 part-time instructors,” he said, joking, “there are days when I’m the chief bottle washer.”
Getting off the ground with integrated EDI
Masterfit Enterprises began seeking an integrated EDI solution in 2018. Mr. Frias explained, “REI came to us and said they really liked our product and wanted to sell it, but we needed EDI to do business with them.”
Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) was a foreign concept to Mr. Frias and his team. But their extensive use of the QuickBooks Enterprise accounting system helped jumpstart Mr. Frias’s search for the perfect fit. As he put it: “We have the highest level of QuickBooks Enterprise, and we needed an EDI solution that would have direct access and integration with QuickBooks.”
Mr. Frias quickly realized that many EDI solutions simply weren’t integrated enough. He commented: “Providers like Opal and SPS told us their integration was simple – just hit an export button to get an XML or CSV file, and then re-import it into QuickBooks. But when you have a team of eight people, the last thing you need is more work to do. We needed a direct connection.”
TrueCommerce’s integrated EDI on the Foundry Platform provided exactly what Masterfit Enterprises was looking for. Mr. Frias recalled: “TrueCommerce was one of the few companies that had a direct integration with QuickBooks, where orders simply flow in and out and it’s pretty much hands off.”
When Masterfit Enterprises started onboarding with TrueCommerce, Mr. Frias said: “We came in with zero knowledge. There’s a whole vocabulary with EDI – 850s and 855s and 945s – that was foreign to us. Initially, it was overwhelming.”
Luckily for Mr. Frias and his team, TrueCommerce’s implementation process came with the support and training they needed. Mr. Frias described: “Everyone at TrueCommerce was so patient. By the time they finished implementation, we were 70 percent there on learning and understanding. The post-sales support has been incredible, taking us the last 30 percent of the way there.”
Once he found his feet, Mr. Frias was able to train his team on the Foundry Platform with ease. He explained: “Once we got the hang of the process, I was able to onboard new people very easily. A lot of that comes from the fact that TrueCommerce Foundry is well designed.”
TrueCommerce’s EDI integration with QuickBooks has made life easier for the Masterfit Enterprises customer service team. Mr. Frias noted: “There’s only two of them, and they spend most of their time in email and QuickBooks. With TrueCommerce, orders just come right in. They only have to go into Foundry if we come across a new account we missed in mapping. Things just happen automatically.”
Running with eCommerce
To make B2B sales easier for customers who don’t use EDI, Masterfit Enterprises also uses another component of Foundry: TrueCommerce’s B2B eCommerce platform, Nexternal. While Mr. Frias did look at other solutions, he emphasized: “QuickBooks was a key factor again. Because TrueCommerce Nexternal integrated with TrueCommerce EDI, and they both integrate with QuickBooks Enterprise, that was a huge plus.”
He noted, however, that support gave TrueCommerce even more of an edge over the competition. “It came down to support and training. I have nothing but five stars to report about my sales and support experience with TrueCommerce.”
Rolling out a B2B eCommerce storefront also meant convincing customers to start using it. For the first year, Masterfit Enterprises incentivized customers to use the eCommerce site, but found that speed and convenience have been major factors in converting customers.
He stated: “We told customers that if they sent an order via email or fax, our customer service teams had an order entry and response time of two to three days. For an order submitted through the eCommerce site, the order could be shipped as soon as the next day. That incentive has been extremely effective.”
TrueCommerce’s eCommerce integration with QuickBooks helps achieve this rapid turnaround. Mr. Frias noted: “When a customer puts an order into TrueCommerce Nexternal, it’s in QuickBooks in 30 minutes.”
TrueCommerce also elevates the shopping experience for Masterfit Enterprises customers. Mr. Frias said: “TrueCommerce Nexternal gives our customers a nice, pretty experience. The TrueCommerce team did a great job making the B2B store look like our branded website. With shipment tracking, customers can self-track, which reduces the workload on our customer service team, while offering a better experience.”
Enjoying ‘significant’ ROI
For Masterfit Enterprises, TrueCommerce has provided value in numerous ways. Most important to Mr. Frias is the QuickBooks integration, and the excellent support he’s received. He emphasized: “The ROI has been significant. TrueCommerce’s QuickBooks integration is rock solid. At the same time, the support we’ve received has been key; it’s been unshakable.”
Mr. Frias isn’t the only one enjoying the benefits of integrated solutions from TrueCommerce. He told us: “The customer service team is thrilled, because they do so much less work keying in orders. Plus, our accuracy’s gone way up, thanks to the automation.”
Time savings have been essential to Masterfit Enterprises success with TrueCommerce. Mr. Frias explained: “We wanted to know how much time we were saving in customer service. In the first year, we saved ten to 12 hours per week, which gave our employees time back to work on real customer issues. It adds up – that’s more than 500 hours per year saved.”
The company continues to expand its TrueCommerce investment. Mr. Frias commented: “When we add a new TrueCommerce solution, I don’t see it as an increase in our expenses. I see it as an increase in our productivity. TrueCommerce is saving us ten to 15 percent a month on labor.”
Staying on track during Covid
Throughout the COVID pandemic, TrueCommerce’s cloud-based solutions have been crucial to Masterfit Enterprises. Mr. Frias stated: “TrueCommerce eCommerce and EDI were key during Covid, because we didn’t have to be on site to manage things. TrueCommerce allows my customer service team to be home-based; as long as they have a company laptop, they can log in and do their work. Because of TrueCommerce Foundry, it was easy for our team to go remote.”
In addition to continuing sales of their existing products, Masterfit Enterprises also expanded into the personal protective equipment (PPE) market in 2020. Mr. Frias explained: “We produce about 50 percent of our products in China, and the other 50 percent are manufactured in our New York facility. In the first few months of Covid, our Chinese partners told us they had all these masks, so we brought in 100,000.”
Those first 100,000 masks sold out in just a week, prompting Masterfit Enterprises to purchase more from its Chinese factories. Mr. Frias said: “Through those first months, masks made up a good part of our revenue.”
TrueCommerce’s eCommerce solution played a big role in Masterfit’s switch to the PPE market, according to Mr. Frias. He commented: “Getting dealers set up for this entirely new product was so simple with TrueCommerce. Being able to map them directly into QuickBooks was an added efficiency.
“We wound up being very busy for about two months with the PPE orders,” Mr. Frias recalled. “We couldn’t have done it without TrueCommerce Nexternal. We had orders flying in and immediately going into QuickBooks, so the shipping team could just fill, fill, fill, fill. We weren’t bogged down by the paperwork and the process at all.”
Unbeatable SMB support
Mr. Frias mentioned that many companies that ‘say’ they cater to small- and mid-sized businesses (SMBs) don’t really understand what SMBs need. He explained: “Most providers just take their enterprise product and discount it. But for a small company like us, it’s not just about the cost. If you take off ten percent but set me loose on a platform with no support, that’s not good enough.”
TrueCommerce has been different, said Mr. Frias. “TrueCommerce has done a great job of truly understanding the wants and needs of the SMB market. The support is incredible. The way TrueCommerce handles a customer moving through different teams, products, and processes is amazing. It feels like a family. It’s very inclusive, everyone is out to make sure that your experience is good and successful.”
He stressed: “We’re a small company. I need my partners to pick up the ball and get things done, and TrueCommerce does that.”
Taking the next step with pack & ship
Masterfit Enterprises isn’t done investing in TrueCommerce’s integrated technology. Next on their list is TrueCommerce’s multi-carrier shipping solution, Pack & Ship.
“When my shipping team came to me and said we need to improve our efficiency in the warehouse – I didn’t look at a single competitor,” said Mr. Frias. “I saw it was in the tools offered by Foundry and called up our Sales Rep to set up demos and move forward.”
He highlighted: “We were comfortable doing that because we already knew how great TrueCommerce’s support and integrations were. I knew it would be more of the same in the best way.”
The Masterfit Enterprises team is already excited to get started. Mr. Frias told us: “We can’t wait to go live. Our shipping team right now spends five to ten hours a week doing paperwork and inputting data into QuickBooks. TrueCommerce Pack & Ship is definitely going to save us money and time. We’re hopeful it’ll improve our shipping accuracy, too.”
Mr. Frias hopes to keep adding more TrueCommerce solutions in the future. He commented: “Considering the last two years of ridiculously positive engagement with the TrueCommerce team, it’s just a matter of looking at what’s left in its catalog to see what we can use. TrueCommerce has earned our business because of the support, but also because every time I turn around its saving us more time and money.”
Objective:
Meet the EDI needs of all requesting partners and offer non-EDI partners a simple route for ordering via B2B eCommerce platform.
Solution:
Leverage TrueCommerce Foundry EDI and eCommerce solution integrated with QuickBooks Enterprise to enable easier connectivity and rapid order processing.
Benefits:
• Direct QuickBooks integration delivers new orders into the client’s ERP system in 30 minutes
• Automation eliminates data entry, saving 500+ hours in customer service time in the first year
• Integrated eCommerce reduces shipping turnaround from five to six days to one day
• Unbeatable support meets the unique needs of a small business as it grows