Pet Family Ecommerce Case Study

Multi-channel Commerce serving the pet care sector.

Founded in 1968 and having evolved over time through the creation or acquisition of other business, Pet Family are now one of the UK's leading pet care companies who combine to offer both the individual pet owner and independent pet shop owner an unrivalled quality of services and products.

"Red Technology have been nothing short of exceptional with their knowledge and guidance with this project. They have been a pleasure to work with from start to finish, their attention to detail has been excellent for us with understanding our expectation and drive for a successful website. The subscription module has been great to work with, our customers are very happy with everything, and everyone understands how it works very well."

E-Commerce & Marketing Director, Pet Family

Project Highlights

Customised designs
Completely customised designs, with unique components, across all sites helping them stand out from their competitors and avoid the cookie cutter look and feel often associated with theme-based platforms
B2B & D2C Ecommerce
Sites built to serve the specific nuances of both B2B and D2C ecommerce from the same installation with specific functions aimed at both different markets
Replenishment subscriptions
Sites inherently built to cater for replenishment subscriptions within the platform so functionality all works together. No clunky plug-ins, bolt-ons or apps and no additional costs
Call Centre
Built-in call centre allows admin users to setup/view customer accounts and process orders on their behalf as well as aiding customer service to provide support
User generated content
User generated content on D2C ecommerce sites delivered through SnapWidget integration to the brand's Instagram accounts
Multiple payment options
Multiple payment options including card payments, PayPal and Apple Pay on D2C sites plus on account, with credit limit and repayment terms imported from their ERP system against each account, on B2B sites
Integrations
Seamless integrations with numerous third-party systems including Trust Payments, Feefo, Mailchimp, Loqate, Google Tag Manager & Google Analytics
International
Multiple international versions of their D2C sites including for the UK, France, The Netherlands, Italy, Germany & Belgium, with further countries to follow across the different brands
Store Locator
UK store locator helping customers find retail partners with Google maps and postcode lookup powered by Loqate. International stores are also listed separately

Project Integrations

Project Overview

Having developed or acquired numerous pet care businesses over the years, Pet Family had a number of D2C, Retail and B2B ecommerce sites running on different platforms such as Magento 2 and WooCommerce. It meant things were becoming difficult to manage, functionality was missing, and costs were not shared. What they wanted was a single platform capable of supporting all of the sites across the different channels. As tradeit has been developed from the ground up to natively support B2C, B2B, D2C and international ecommerce, plus any mixture thereof, it's the ideal choice for businesses selling through multiple channels and brands. It means you can have the customer friendliness and design of a retail or D2C site, allied to the specific functionality of B2B or international ecommerce. Economies of scale mean additional sites can be deployed rapidly and cost effectively too. It's one of the main reasons why more and more businesses are delivering their short and long-term ecommerce strategies on tradeit.

D2C Ecommerce

As you'd expect with such quality products, they are only available in carefully selected stores and from certain online retailers where nutritional advice has been received from Pet Family and can be passed on to customers. This considered approach means that they are reliant on direct-to-consumer sales from their websites forming a large part of their revenue. It also ensures they can carefully control the image of their brands and build long term relationships directly with their end users.

The focus on D2C sales is reflected in the clean and functional design of the sites which aim to drive users to products and make purchasing them as easy as possible. To that end, there is a quick add function on the product listings pages to making buying multiple items a cinch without visiting each product page (including choosing any variations and both one-time & subscription options). There is also a closed checkout with address book and multiple payment options (including saved cards) to speed up purchase. Users adding to existing subscriptions, don't even need to checkout.

B2B Ecommerce

Alongside their D2C brand sites, Pet Family also offer a wholesale site, We.Pet, specifically aimed at supporting independent pet retailers. As mentioned, tradeit has been built from the ground up to natively support B2B ecommerce, so accommodating their wholesale requirements was simple. The site features numerous B2B specific tools such as the pricing manager, quick order tools, multiple payment methods (including on account), quantity steps on products and much more.

Multichannel & International Ecommerce

Having grown throughout the years via the introduction and acquisition of new brands, being able to launch sites for each, and deliver country-specific channels, all via the same platform, is a key part of their expansion strategy. It's one of the main reasons for replatforming to tradeit and has enabled them to launch localised sites for France, Belgium, Italy, Germany, and The Netherlands for several of their brands, with others to follow.

Ecommerce Subscriptions

As direct-to-consumer sales are so important, offering subscriptions is a key element of their sales strategy and was paramount on the brand sites. It’s a great opportunity to ensure future revenue without the added cost of acquisition, and helps drive a significantly higher CLV (Customer Lifetime Value) than from non-subscribers. Rather than rely on a third-party plugin or app like Autoship or Aheadworks that they used previously, the subscription functionality is inherent to the tradeit platform. That means it’s developed as part of the core code by the same developers responsible for the platform, ensuring every element works perfectly with the other functionality.

It's PCI DSS compliant and functionally rich too, with a focus on customers' ability to self-serve. That means they are in control of their repeat orders and can add to them, change their frequency, their billing day, their payment method, the delivery address, move the billing date (if they are away for example) or cancel them whenever they like.