De La Mer
Prior to COVID-19, we would only sell through our 4 retail locations. Now we still sell through our retail locations and we are able to have a functional retail online presence.
David Owen
President of De La Mer
De La Mer now has a functional retail online presence
Interview with David Owen – President of De La Mer
About De La Mer
De La Mer is a fresh fish and seafood market based in Toronto, Canada, providing a wide range of fresh and sustainable fish and seafood. Team members at De La Mer love to educate their customers about sustainable fishing practices and how their fish are caught/where they are from. They wanted to expand their geographical reach and to allow their customers to order from them ahead of time, so needed an eCommerce solution. They discovered commercebuild, to help them to build their Sage 300 integrated eCommerce webstore so that they could offer their customers an exceptional customer shopping experience every single time!
David Owen, President of De La Mer, took the time to tell us about his experience working with commercebuild. Check out what he has to say below!
Please could you give us an overview of De La Mer?
We are a fresh fish and seafood market in Toronto, Ontario Canada, operating under the De La Mer fresh fish market
Who are your customers and how do you sell to them?
We are a B2C company and we sell to the general retail public. Prior to COVID-19, we would only sell through our 4 retail locations. Now we still sell through our retail locations and we are able to have a functional retail online presence.
What business challenges were you wanting to address and improve by building a webstore?
There were two challenges that we were looking to address. The first challenge was a new reality that customers wanted to order ahead of time because of COVID. The second challenge was how to increase the reach of our brand beyond the traditional geographic areas that we drew from.
We found that our efforts to deal with order taking through more traditional means like email and telephone lead to too many hassles in the form of missed orders, lost paperwork, and disappointed customers.
How did you hear about commercebuild and why did you pick our team to build your webstore?
We heard about commercebuild through our Sage 300 consultants at GWA. We chose commercebuild because of its tight integration with Sage 300 and relatively low barrier to entry, compared to other similar products such as Shopify.
How would you describe the integration and setup process?
For us, the integration and setup process was challenging. I believe that this was mostly because we were also brand new to Sage 300. The challenges were more with regards to Sage than commercebuild.
How has the building of a commercebuild webstore or customer portal impacted your core metrics?
I would say that the main impact of commercebuild is to centralize our ability to take orders from our customers in two major ways. Firstly, we can see what is on hand to sell without physically having to go into the fridge to check what’s there or find a text or email to our suppliers to see what is on order. Secondly, the online store has reduced the labor required to process customer orders. We no longer need to have someone at EACH store checking voicemails or emails (so four people in total) – we now have one person who can receive and dispatch the orders to the various locations.
What would your team’s workflow or process be like without our product?
At this point, I wouldn’t even want to think about it. There would be chaos, especially as we have been dealing with labor shortages.
What advice would you give to those who might be considering commercebuild to build out their webstore?
The most important thing to do from the client’s side is to have a clear understanding of what their needs are from the webstore. Do a complete audit of the business process before starting the build and go through each step with the commercebuild team to ensure that each step can be accounted for. We did not take this step (or rather we did half of this step) and we paid for the lack of attention to detail in the end through lost time.
If you’re thinking of expanding your business into the digital world, book a free demo with us today to see how commercebuild can help with your digital transformation!