BluePallet benefits
Benefits experienced following onboarding to the BluePallet platform include
Access to a comprehensive product catalog directly translated into additional customer value
Targeted access to customers made customer acquisition easier and less expensive
Extensive AR protection so new customers could be onboarded without exhaustive credit checks or risk profiling
Executive summary
All businesses are gauged by their ability to deliver consistent value to their customers. A major food ingredients and industrial chemicals distributor offered customers a product catalog with access to a wide range of high quality products. However, the client’s offerings were often limited by the availability of certain products in the United States. This made acquiring new low-risk customers difficult.
BluePallet offered the customer easy access to products that would otherwise be extremely expensive and difficult to offer to an American audience.
About the customer
The client is a food ingredients and industrial chemicals distributor with over two decades of experience in food safety and responsible distribution. The client built its business on the core idea of delivering the highest quality service and personal attention to each customer. Since the development of a state-of-the-art facility in 2009, the client has been able to leverage their technical expertise and customer-oriented approach to serve customers all over the country.
The challenge
Product offerings were limited by availability and ease of access in the United States
To serve customers countrywide effectively, it is necessary to provide a wide range of product options to choose from. However, the client was limited in their ability to offer this reliability due to gaps and delays in availability for hard-to-source products.
The client needed access to a marketplace that could offer a selection of rare and specialized products to serve a varied and highly demanding customer base.
Acquiring new customers required significant legwork and marketing resources
Since their inception, the client has been on a steady path of growth and expansion. To maintain this trajectory, they needed to acquire new clients continually. However, this required substantial marketing investment and administrative legwork.
Marketing teams had to conduct significant market research to find the service gaps that they could fill and product teams had to learn their clientele’s preferences before crafting a proposal for them. Once a customer was willing to sign on with the client, due diligence was necessary to ascertain that the customer could meet their contract obligations. From customer segmentation to outreach to conversion, the customer acquisition process was lengthy, expensive, and tedious.
Low risk appetite and reluctance to reach out to high-risk customers
While acquiring new customers is essential for business growth and expansion, it came with significant risk for the client. Food ingredients and industrial chemicals were regularly delivered on credit and businesses had to conduct significant research to ensure that a customer could pay when the time arrived. These processes were extremely time and resource intensive.
Such administrative barriers created an extremely low risk appetite during searches for potential new customers. Any customer deemed high-risk was immediately disqualified from consideration for outreach. This limited the sales opportunities to low-risk customers that were highly sought after and in short supply.
The solution
Consistently expand product offerings through an exhaustive storefront
Customer preferences regularly shift to reflect changing market conditions and product availability. The client needed consistent access to the products clients were looking for. A comprehensive storefront was the solution.
BluePallet allowed the client to adjust their product offerings as needed through a storefront that offered a robust variety of products from numerous suppliers across the country. The platform provided consistent access to products that would otherwise be extremely challenging to procure in the United States, giving the client a significant advantage over competitors with more limited product offerings.
Easy access to targeted customers all over the United States reduced the marketing required for customer acquisition
The client has an extensive product portfolio and an equally diverse customer base. While each customer has unique product preferences, their desire to purchase high quality food ingredients and industrial chemicals is universal. However, marketing to such customers countrywide requires effective customer segmentation and extensive outreach.
BluePallet’s comprehensive marketplace allowed the client to easily reach the customers most interested in its products. The same marketplace makes it easy for customers to view the client’s credentials and product offerings. This increases the effectiveness of inbound marketing efforts by allowing customers to request the products they need through a wanted board where the client can easily respond.
Guaranteed payments within 30 days allowed stress-free outreach to customers with different risk profiles
New customers can be difficult to come by in highly competitive marketplaces and businesses are sometimes forced to serve customers with higher risk profiles. This risk was easily mitigated with extensive AR insurance protections and due diligence conducted by BluePallet. The platform guarantees payment within 30 days to allow customers to freely reach out to new customers without worrying about the impact that default or delayed payment can have on cash flow or business continuity.
