Jonny Pops:
Small Business Growth in Frozen Treats
Order automation using EDI helps young retail entrepreneurs scale their business from push carts to global distribution.
Jonny Pops is a young company that aims to make the world a better place, one frozen treat (or pop) at a time. The company’s founding retail entrepreneurs started selling the smoothies on a stick at farmers markets in Twin Cities, Minnesota and have quickly grown the small business. Their products are now sold in grocery stores, school cafeterias and other sites across North America. This small business growth came with sophisticated retail partners who demanded order automation and EDI to do business. Jonny Pops looked to SPS Commerce to become their EDI department.
Retail entrepreneurs need to scale
Jonny Pops began working with SPS when Costco asked them to do EDI as part of the new trading relationship. SPS set Jonny Pops up on its EDI solution, SPS Commerce Fulfillment. This empowered the supplier to begin receiving orders from this account in a short period time. Since then, Jonny Pops has added on more retail partners to their EDI operations as their small business continues to grow.
A few years later, the supplier deployed a new ERP solution, NetSuite. They advanced their use of SPS Fulfillment, adding on its system automation capabilities to NetSuite. This new integration extended their order automation and created additional opportunities for small business growth.
Small business growth requires full-service support
As the company grew, they added more warehouses to their supply chain and added new flavors to their product line. Jonny Pops continues to foster the innovation that launched their business in a dorm room not long ago.
With growth, comes choices. Leaders must choose what skills they need in-house and which functions are not core competencies. These are outsourced or managed by a trusted partner. EDI wasn’t something that the Jonny Pops team wanted to staff internally, but it was essential for growth. They needed a solution consisting of easy-to-use technology backed by a team that was constantly monitoring their data and was accessible at any time. They needed full-service EDI from SPS Commerce.
The Interviewee:
Connor Wray, Co-Founder and CFO
The Interviewee:
Danny McCloud, Customer Service Representative
The Challenge:
Support the small business growth from a few local retailers to 10,000 retail locations.
The Solution:
Team with the experts at SPS and NetSuite for order automation to enable growth.
The Results:
Onboard with new retailers quickly and rely on SPS to be their EDI department.
“We essentially think of SPS as our EDI department, and so it is absolutely not just the technology. It is also the people who help us onboard new retailers, who help us troubleshoot problems, and who help us think about ways that we can use the technology to add even more value into our internal business processes or into those relationships with the retailers.”
Connor Wray, Co-Founder and CFO, Jonny Pops
Additional References
Read more about full-service EDI and other stories of how we’ve helped businesses optimize their supply chains and increase sales.
