By streamlining its inventory, cleaning up its accounting, and seamlessly integrating critical third-party applications with Cin7, VULCAN Fitness is making its mark in the sports and fitness industry.
The pandemic was a life-altering, worldwide crisis, but for the co-founders of VULCAN Fitness, Dhilukshan (Dhil) Ramalingam and Justin Riley, it was also a chance to start a transformational business. Dhil and Justin opened VULCAN Fitness in 2020 in Brisbane, Australia.
“We saw an opportunity in the fitness equipment market when the commercial gyms closed,” Dhil says. “People were obviously scrambling to keep fit and train from home, so we decided to start selling our own high quality, home gym equipment.”
As the home-gym business grew and as Covid concerns eased, they added boutique studios and chain fitness centers to their growing portfolio.
The Australian-based e-commerce business (which also has a brick-and-mortar showroom) doesn’t provide just any old equipment to its customers. Dhil and Justin thoroughly vet their manufactures, confirming each piece of equipment they sell meets their exacting standards so that every customer can safely reach their personal best.
Community building and customer service is also serious business for Dhil and Justin, who field customer calls directly.
VULCAN Fitness easily progressed from startup to ripped e-commerce business by emphasizing the physical wellbeing and safety of its customers and recognizing the importance of community. However, to avoid the dreaded plateau stage, Dhil and Justin knew they had to address a few pressing issues.
Like the fact that they were taking care of their inventory needs solely with Excel.
“It was extremely complicated,” says Dhil. “We sell a lot of bundles, and one of my colleagues was pretty good in Excel and we were able to manage it, but as you grow and as our number of bundles increased, it just got very tricky.”
Not only was managing inventory with a spreadsheet program challenging, but it was also making the VULCAN Fitness accounting team—in Dhil’s words—sad.
“Accounting would ask us for closing inventory, and we didn’t know. We finally got to a point where we knew we needed to make a change. You can never scale and grow properly if you don’t have good systems in place.”
Wasting no time, the VULCAN Fitness team began researching their inventory management solution (IMS) options while also seeking advice from their Australian e-commerce brands coaching community. And there was one IMS that came up repeatedly: Cin7.
Selecting Cin7 over other IMS options, including Fishbowl, was an important first step, but the VULCAN Fitness team decided they required a spotter when it came to implementation. At the recommendation of a large fitness brand in Sydney, VULCAN Fitness reached out to Kevin Smith, Director of Technology at Hawk Cloud Consulting for help.
Kevin helped the VULCAN Fitness team, who did a lot of the work themselves, get in top shape with Cin7 Core in about six weeks.
Dhil adds, “We wouldn’t have done it without him.”
Consistently hitting the gym produces big gains, and VULCAN Fitness quickly discovered that implementing Cin7 does too. One of the biggest gains was their improved visibility into and control over their inventory.
“We never had a live inventory system in place,” Dhil explains. “If someone called me asking if they could buy something, normally, I would go into the warehouse and count to make sure I have it. Now, I can check in Cin7. It’s saved us a lot of time, and we can sell more confidently as well.”
Because VULCAN Fitness sells high average order value (AOV) goods to customers with high expectations, the team must be at the top of their supply chain and their forecasting games. Fortunately, they can see their supply chain clearly with Cin7, stopping any overselling during peak season in its tracks.
Dhil also highlights the incredible time savings they’ve experienced by automating their pick sheets for their bundles. “We were copying and pasting from Excel to Shopify, but with Cin7, we’ve saved heaps of time.”
And there’s one more benefit that gets the VULCAN Fitness team pumped: the Xero-Cin7 integration.
“Cin7 speaks to Xero, which makes the accounting process super simple. The accounting team doesn’t really need to do anything because of the connection. Our books are a lot cleaner—something we didn’t have for the first three years—and our accounting team is happier.”
Dhil’s happier too.
Dhil and Justin have ambitious plans for growing VULCAN Fitness, including supplementing their equipment line with new brands, watching the recovery market for exciting opportunities, and focusing on becoming more efficient, but they’re not worried about burning out; they know they have Cin7 (and Kevin) to help with the heavy lifting.