Case Study
Crisp lights the way to better data for Thistle Farms
With Crisp, Thistle Farms has instant access to the latest sales data across all of their retail locations.
Situation
Spending valuable time in spreadsheets
Thistle Farms is a social enterprise selling candles, body care, and home goods products while providing lifelong employment opportunities for women. After launching at their first Whole Foods location in Nashville 12 years ago, Thistle Farms has grown steadily in retail, winning “Supplier of the Year” in 2016 and running two national campaigns. Now, they sell a wide variety of products in home goods, body care, and more across 450 Whole Foods locations, Amazon, and a number of independent retailers. Over the past year alone, these enterprises collectively reached more than 40,000 customers, providing over $2m in income for survivors.
To keep sales healthy, Sales Coordinator Sherri Roddick maintained a clear understanding of how products were performing across their Whole Foods distribution – but it wasn’t easy. “It was all manual,” Sherri reflects. “I was the spreadsheet queen. There was a spreadsheet for everything.” In fact, Sherri dedicated a full week out of every month to extracting and consolidating raw data, then deciphering it to inform strategic planning for marketing and sales. But at a nonprofit trying to do the most it can every day, this wasn’t the best way to spend time.
Solution
Charting a bright future
Now, Sherri has instant access to the latest sales data across all of Thistle Farms’ retail locations and Amazon. She checks Crisp every morning to get a high-level view of the business and keep an eye on her biggest accounts. With the Velocity dashboard, Sherri tracks sales at key stores, identifying where they’ve gained momentum or where it might make sense to do a promotion. Sherri saves reports that are filtered on these stores, quickly pulling up top five sellers each month to prep for an upcoming demo. She also loves the Voids Dashboard, which analyzes 13 different data points to detect stores where a product should be selling, but isn’t. Sherri knows that products can fall off a retailer’s radar, but until Crisp, she had no way to detect those situations. Now, if a SKU went missing in the retailer’s system, she can identify and quickly correct the issue.
Sherri still does her monthly data deep-dive, but with Crisp, she can focus this time on forward-looking insights. For example, Sherri found that a fragrance the team thought would trend seasonally was actually showing consistent sales year-round, so she adjusted plans to keep the product stocked.
Inspiring Results:
• Saved up to one week out of every month
• Increased velocity at key stores
• Identified and detected voids across retail locations
• Improved forecasting with accurate, up-to-date sales trends
Favorite Tool:
Voids Dashboard
Crisp’s proprietary model detects locations where a product should be selling, but isn’t.
“At Thistle Farms, we wear lot of different hats, so having literally hours out of my month back is time that I can use to proactively grow the business.”
Sherri Roddick
Sales Coordinator
Always be Data Ready with Crisp
Crisp allows food brands and retailers to stay ahead of rapidly evolving consumer behavior, identify potential supply chain disruptions, track inventory and product performance. It’s easy and quick to get started so you can be Data Ready.