Kick Push

Miserable in his soul-destroying call centre job and with a young family to support, Darin Gersbach realised it was time for a new direction. An avid snowboarder and self confessed ‘ultimate consumer’ he decided to turn his passion into a business and sell snow gear through eBay.

Things were going great; he could bid adieu to his job and be his own boss. But with his wife and kids tripping over mountains of sports gear in their lounge and his mum packing orders at the kitchen table, it was soon time to step things up a notch.

Pushing on with the business

With Darin’s eBay business taking over the family home, they shifted into a warehouse that could fit all his stock. Darin then spent two weeks building the website to launch his official skate and scooter web store, Kick Push. But as the business continued to boom he faced even bigger hurdles. "Our original ecommerce platform was missing key components we desperately needed. We couldn’t grow because we were stuck spending hours every day badly maintaining a manual inventory system and fussing with order labels because we didn’t have integrated shipping," says Darren.

Then there were the skyrocketing costs due to inefficient bolt-on solutions. “Soon we were paying $900 per month for shipping and inventory systems that didn’t even work well,” he explains.

It was a ‘Sliding Doors’ moment when the founder of Neto contacted Darin to place an order for some scooters. “I was pretty apprehensive about moving to a new platform because the business was already turning over a couple of million dollars a year and I didn’t want to lose orders during the migration, but it was seamless – at the click of a button it was business as usual.”

| Related Reading: Let Neto Set You Up for Ecommerce Success in 5 Easy Steps

Getting found and impressing customers

The Neto platform is built for search engine optimisation and includes seamless Google Shopping integration. “It has really helped Kick Push to get found online, which is critical when you’re running an e-store,” says Darin who now finds running promotions to be a key part of his ‘market attacking’ strategy too. “We can offer discounts by product or brand, or coupons can be processed at checkout. Plus with Mailchimp integration, we can notify our customers of specials and keep in touch with regular newsletters.”

The benefits of Neto go further than what’s happening behind the scenes. In the highly competitive world of online retail it’s important to Darin that customers enjoy a great user experience.

The site loads quickly, the templates are slick, product filtering helps people to find what they want and the one-page checkout process is easy to use.

And with a range of integrated payment options like Afterpay and ZipPay, Kick Push has increased its average order value. In fact around 30% of the company’s sales are with AfterPay.

Business decisions based on real results. Neto saves time, money...

It all adds up to better business. In just eight months of switching to Neto, Kick Push experienced 30% growth. But not only is the business making more money, it’s keeping more in the coffers too. “We’ve saved at least $100K per year in labour – there’s no more time spent fussing with eBay because it’s a mirror of Neto – it works brilliantly with minimal maintenance and by using Neto Ship for order fulfilment we save another full time resource.”

Running the business means Darin has to wear a lot of hats and Neto makes that much easier. Neto Dashboard gives a complete picture of stock control, purchase orders and low stock alerts, as well as key business metrics such as gross profit, profit margins and day to day sales patterns – at the touch of a button. And with key business processes automated, he’s had time to focus on growth by adding two new product categories. Once upon a time Darin had to sacrifice Sunday to prep Monday’s orders.

Now he’s got his weekend back he can spend time on his other favourite action sport – running around after his kids.

...and sanity!

“All the problems I had are gone. Neto’s capabilities mean more than better business, it improves the other things that are so important in life. It means quality time with family and at work it means less stress, fewer problems and a predictable day that improves team morale,” Darin enthuses.

Now one of the biggest online skate and scooter stores in the world, Darin has a crew of eight people at his warehouse cranking tunes and enjoying a laugh while they work. These are much happier days, and that’s just the way Darin likes it.

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