Children's Product Industry Grows Up On NetSuite Cloud

SAN MATEO, Calif., Oct. 16, 2013 /PRNewswire/ -- NetSuite Inc. (NYSE: N), the industry's leading provider of cloud-based financials / ERP and omnichannel commerce software suites, today announced new customer wins and strong momentum in the children's product industry as manufacturers, distributors and retailers of toys and activity kits, diapers, apparel, mattresses and more drive business growth across new domestic and global markets atop NetSuite's single, integrated cloud business management platform. These new wins include: Belabumbum, a Washington, D.C.-based maker of maternity and baby wear; Blueberry Diapers, a manufacturer of cloth diapers based in Knoxville, Tenn.; Halo Innovations, a Minnetonka, Minn.-based maker of wearable blankets and other sleepwear for babies and children; Naturepedic, a manufacturer of organic mattresses and other bedding products in Chagrin Falls, Ohio, and The Orb Factory, a seller of crafts and activity products in Halifax, Nova Scotia. With NetSuite, these businesses have seen benefits including dramatic improvements in business efficiency, streamlined collaboration with suppliers, manufacturers and distribution partners, and real-time visibility into critical business. For more information, please visit http://www.netsuite.com/portal/landing/abc.shtml.

These and other NetSuite customers in the highly competitive kids' product industry have significantly improved their competitive position against larger rivals with economies of scale that are impossible for smaller companies to match using traditional on-premise servers and collections of disparate software applications. With NetSuite's unified cloud business management suite, these cloud leaders are channeling resources otherwise invested in costly and maintenance-intensive IT infrastructure into product innovation and outstanding customer service, winning loyalty among discriminating and demanding parent consumers. Often upgrading from entry-level QuickBooks systems and inefficient spreadsheet processes, NetSuite customers in the baby and children's market are improving productivity and driving growth with a single solution for financials/ERP, inventory and order management, and CRM. For Ecommerce, NetSuite SuiteCommerce is in place to power both B2B and B2C sales, delivering an interactive and engaging online channel that also extends to call center and brick-and-mortar touchpoints to enable a true omnichannel shopping experience. NetSuite CRM gives these customers a unified view of both B2B and B2C buyers to improve sales effectiveness and customer service, while many companies take advantage of complementary solutions from NetSuite SuiteCloud Developer Network (SDN) partners in such areas as electronic data interchange (EDI) transactions and shipping optimization.

NetSuite is helping manufacturers, distributors and retailers in the kids' product industry increase performance and profitability by:

• Providing a real-time, 360-degree view of the business by seamlessly integrating financials/ERP, CRM and Ecommerce, thereby empowering businesses to manage their interactions directly with consumers, other businesses and trading partners 
• Improving supply chain operations with integrated inventory and order management, and building demand forecasts with real-time data, reducing excess inventory or the risk of stockouts
• Allowing data to flow seamlessly to wholesale distributors and their trading partners, to ensure communication is in lockstep with the same data, audit trails and real-time accuracy at every stage
• Sharing container, pallet, location, forecasting, scheduling and unit-level data with stakeholders, while collaborating on a common cloud platform
• Managing all transactions and associated customer interactions regardless of touchpoint

"Parents may be the most discriminating set of customers in any market, and meeting their high expectations requires superior business performance across the board, from sourcing to logistics, sales and service," said Ranga Bodla, NetSuite Industry Marketing Director. "We're very proud of our growing list of innovative customers in the baby and children's market and congratulate them for their remarkable success in taking full advantage of the transformative power of cloud technology."

Baby and child industry cloud innovators running NetSuite are showcasing their products and success at the ABC Kids Expo on October 15-18 in Las Vegas, Nev., the annual tradeshow for kids industry manufacturers and retailers sponsored by the All Baby & Child association, attracting some 10,000 attendees from more than 60 countries.

Among the expanding NetSuite customer base of baby and children's product makers and sellers exhibiting at the ABC Kids Expo are Belabumbum, Blueberry Diapers, Halo Innovations, Naturepedic and the Orb Factory.

Blueberry Diapers Grows Omnichannel Sales Via Online, Call Center with NetSuite SuiteCommerce

Blueberry Diapers (www.blueberrydiapers.com), a maker of cloth diapers based in Knoxville, Tenn., has expanded its distribution business across 22 countries in North America, Europe, Asia, South America and Australia since replacing QuickBooks and a custom-built website with NetSuite SuiteCommerce. Formerly known as Swaddlebees, Blueberry Diapers executes 95 percent of all B2B transactions (the bulk of its business) through its SuiteCommerce storefront, which also powers direct-to-consumer sales and supports several branded sites that market complementary products, including www.flosprayer.com and www.pinkdaisygirl.com. Since running NetSuite, Blueberry Diapers has seen revenue growth of about 133 percent while improving overall business efficiency. Blueberry Diapers sources goods from a dozen U.S. suppliers to production at its contract manufacturer in rural Arkansas and sells about 1,000 SKUs to hundreds of retail buyers, including Amazon, Kelly's Closet and Right Start. "NetSuite has helped us tremendously without having to add manpower. There's no way we could do the same volume on our old system as we do with NetSuite—we can easily ship 200 orders a day with huge time savings," said Casey McClure, Blueberry Diapers Director of Sales. "The KPIs on my home screen give me a great snapshot of the business, and we never have to worry about downtime on our NetSuite website."

NetSuite Enables Efficient Order Management, Supply Chains, Inventory Management and CRM

Belabumbum (www.belabumbum.com), a Washington, D.C.-based manufacturer of maternity and baby wear, lingerie, sleepwear and other apparel for women, has streamlined end-to-end business processes since implementing NetSuite in 2007 to replace an entry-level QuickBooks application. With NetSuite as its foundation for financials, inventory and order management, procurement, CRM and direct-to-consumer online store, Belabumbum is realizing steady year-over-year growth of up to 15 percent while growing its wholesale and B2C sales across more than 50 countries in North America, Europe, Central and South America, Asia and the Middle East. Belabumbum uses NetSuite for transactions with about eight manufacturers in Peru, Colombia, Mexico and Brazil, as well as with about 550 retailers, including Nordstrom.com, BareNecessities.com and Diapers.com. NetSuite supplies real-time visibility into about 1,200 SKUs at Belabumbum's Maryland warehouse, while managing business with a third-party logistics (3PL) provider in Belgium. "We've grown incredibly since we've been on NetSuite," said Alyssa Weiss, Belabumbum Co-Founder. "There's no way we could have had such growth without integrating billing, inventory and CRM in NetSuite. We've been very successful managing inventory and the customer experience on NetSuite, and it's very valuable to us because our team is geographically dispersed and NetSuite puts us all in the same office, basically."

Halo Innovations (www.halosleep.com), maker of the SleepSack wearable blanket and other sleepwear for babies and children, has averaged 20 percent year-over-year revenue growth since replacing QuickBooks in 2007 with NetSuite's cloud business management suite. The company, based in Minnetonka, Minn., has since expanded its business to more than 1,000 retailers, including Target, Walmart.com, Babies''R''Us, Amazon and J.C. Penney, and is now achieving significant global growth, with a presence in about 15 countries in Europe and Asia, as well as Australia. Meanwhile, Halo Innovations relies on NetSuite in expanding its business to supply newborn sleepwear to more than 1,000 hospitals in North America, while NetSuite CRM gives the company's call center and sales reps a single source of customer profiles and transaction history, improving sales effectiveness. The company took advantage of NetSuite SuiteCloud customizability to integrate an electronic data interchange (EDI) solution from NetSuite partner B2B Gateway to streamline transactions with large retail customers. Real-time visibility into sales, budget vs. actuals and procurement costs helps Halo Innovation make data-driven decisions to grow the business. "The cloud-based aspect is definitely nice so employees can access it from anywhere, and NetSuite is very scalable so that as we add staff we can simply add licenses," said Mark Merrell, Halo Innovations Controller. "NetSuite's flexibility in integrating with EDI and web sales and the import/export of data has been very valuable."

Naturepedic (www.naturepedic.com), a manufacturer of organic mattresses and bedding products for babies, kids and adults based in Chagrin Falls, Ohio, has achieved triple-digit growth since implementing NetSuite in 2008 to replace QuickBooks and Shipworks. Naturepedic efficiently runs end-to-end business processes on NetSuite, from sourcing raw materials to production at its 70-plus person manufacturing facility in Ohio to sales to more than 500 brick-and-mortar and online retailers in North America, including buybuy BABY, Target, Babies''R''Us and Amazon, as well as hundreds of independent retailers and more than 150 hospitals. The NetSuite Partner Center gives retail customers a centralized location to manage their accounts, while NetSuite multi-location inventory capabilities support distribution from a central warehouse and several 3PL locations in the U.S. and Canada. An EDI solution from NetSuite partner B2BGateway enables Naturepedic to do business with larger retailers, integrating with NetSuite financials and inventory and order management. NetSuite's flexibility enabled the company to rapidly launch a separate brand, www.lullabyearth.com, selling baby crib mattresses at a lower price point. "The best feature of NetSuite is the ability to access our data whenever and wherever," said Jeff Cik, Naturepedic President. "One of the reasons we chose NetSuite is because we knew we could grow with it. We've been able to concentrate on building the business instead of maintaining IT infrastructure and doing constant backups."

The Orb Factory (www.orbfactory.com), a global seller of crafts and activity products for children, has realized double-digit growth while expanding its business to about 65 countries since implementing NetSuite in April 2011 to run core financials, inventory and CRM processes. Based in Halifax, Nova Scotia, The Orb Factory has realized large gains in cost-efficiency and visibility across its business with NetSuite, compared to its previous systems, including a green screen, DOS-based financials program called Vigilant, an AS/400 based inventory system and Now Contact for CRM. Lacking integration across those applications, The Orb Factory resorted to time-consuming manual work and double-entry to reconcile data. NetSuite has given the company a seamless, efficient business environment covering its sourcing and manufacture of goods at contract plants in China, distribution via a 3PL partner with NetSuite login privileges, and sales to distributors and retailers including Toys "R" Us Canada and A.C. Moore. The Orb Factory has enriched its environment with solutions from NetSuite SuiteCloud Developer Network partners, including SPS Commerce for EDI and Oz Development for shipping. "NetSuite has given us real-time information for ourselves and our business partners and increased visibility of inventory issues," said Diane Axell, Director of Finance at The Orb Factory. "We're able to define standards of performance and track critical business metrics to run the company much more effectively."

About NetSuite

Today, more than 16,000 companies and subsidiaries depend on NetSuite to run complex, mission-critical business processes globally in the cloud. Since its inception in 1998, NetSuite has established itself as the leading provider of enterprise-class cloud financials/ERP suites for divisions of large enterprises and mid-sized organizations seeking to upgrade their antiquated client/server ERP systems. NetSuite excels at streamlining business operations as demonstrated in a recent Gartner study naming NetSuite as the fastest growing financial management software vendor on a global basis. NetSuite continues its success in delivering the best cloud ERP/financials suites to businesses around the world, enabling them to lower IT costs significantly while increasing productivity, as the global adoption of the cloud is accelerating.

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SOURCE NetSuite Inc.