Balsam Brands, a leading retailer of artificial Christmas trees and holiday décor, has expanded its partnership with Competera. Following the successful solution implementation by the US team in 2020 and growing gross margin by over 3%, Balsam Brands rolled out the solution to four more geos, including the United Kingdom, Australia, Germany, and France.
Through the extended partnership, Competera's solution included a number of functional add-ons that contributed to a smooth user experience during the solution adoption process by Balsam Brands' international teams. In particular, Competera enabled the international team with multi-currency price management. In addition, the teams got the opportunity to run and compare pricing scenarios, testing out the algorithms' logic and possible outcomes via the newly released "What-If Scenarios" functionality.
Reflecting on the past year, Balsam Hill International highlighted the challenges that followed the business through 2021: supply chain disruption and skyrocketing costs (namely product manufacturing and freight costs). Nonetheless, the financial year was marked by a significant gross margin growth - over $1 million, with Australia being the strongest performer. Using Competera pricing platform Balsam Hill International received over 20,000 optimal discount recommendations and conducted 40 repricing campaigns during the peak business season.
Their French and German brands finished the fiscal year with 80% of revenue under Competer’s advanced algorithm’s management. Balsam Hill Australia’s revenue grew the most at +60% YoY, followed by Balsam Hill France at +15% YoY growth.
"Since Competera worked with the US office first, a lot of foundation was already set to ensure a smooth launch of the solution for the international departments. What is more, the Competera team clearly communicated the product's functionality and provided us with a deep understanding of how their algorithms were working. This gave us a higher level of trust in the solution and its algorithms, and also delivered very positive results at the end of the financial year," comments Molly McLaughlin, International Growth Strategist at Balsam Brands.
Speaking on the primary goals and team's expectations before the solution launch, Balsam Brands International Growth Manager, Donal Ryan, recalls: "Our expectations for the launch were to have the tool launched in time for our Christmas season. It's a very basic goal, but it was crucial given how short our business season is. It was a learning experience for us in many ways, as we became more flexible and let the tool do its job. Today we have collaborative discussions with Competera about our business constraints and how they can be incorporated into the platform's functionality. We are already working with the team on some additional bespoke features to help us achieve and outperform last year's success. I think the launch was all about the learning experience, and we're really excited about 2022 and what we're about to achieve."
"Customer trust is one of the cornerstones that Competera pursues, and Balsam Brands' international rollout is a big win for the company. In 2022, we will aim to help Balsam Brands with the ever-existing retail challenges: protecting margin during clearance season and discounting seasons like Black Friday and Cyber Monday.
At the same time, we help retailers grow their pricing power in conditions of growing costs because, from what we've seen, not every retailer has compensated for the cost pushes that we've seen in 2022. So this means that the majority of retailers worldwide would need to continue increasing their prices, and this is something where Competera can help by doing this in a differentiated way rather than what we call a "blanket" approach. So that is how we are targeting to help retail go through 2022 and make it a blockbuster year," comments Alexandr Galkin, CEO & Co-Founder at Competera.
