How a great online catalog earns our Distributor partners 20%+ more in revenue every month
What is Cut+Dry??
Cut+Dry is a full-suite digital e-commerce ordering and payments platform for Foodservice distributors and their customers. Our digital data platform allows distributors to offer a rich e-commerce catalog experience to their customers. We have previously written about the importance of having a rich e-commerce experience in our digital transformation whitepaper.?
A rich e-commerce catalog is comprehensive and visually appealing, encompassing various elements such as detailed product descriptions, nutritional information, high-quality images, videos, interactive features, and additional information that enhance your customers’ shopping experience.?
Our digital data platform consists of highly structured and standardized product data of over 800,000 Foodservice products. Our product taxonomy is enriched with highly detailed product data like high-quality images and nutritional information. We have over 10,000 product categories and filterable attributes assigned to products like Halal, Kosher, Organic, Natural, Sustainable, and Recyclable. Basically, everything your customer would want to know about the product you are selling is available.
This means that distributors don’t have to spend thousands of hours and dollars building their own rich catalog filled with information, images, and videos. They can simply plug into Cut+Dry’s digital data platform, map their products onto our product taxonomy, and generate a rich e-commerce catalog for their customers to experience. Cut+Dry has clever, efficient, and proven processes and resources that work together with you to enrich your catalog quickly and inexpensively.
“Great retail sites like Amazon, Wayfair, Walmart, and so many others give us consistently rich, informative, and searchable experiences every day. Yet, B2B Foodservice e-commerce is still mired in drab, one-line text descriptions with lists of cryptic product names, sizes, and prices. The cost and effort to transform that into an Amazon-like experience scares the hell out of independent Foodservice distributors. Well, it really shouldn't - Cut+Dry can help you. Nobody on the planet is as good, fast or as cost-effective at this as us. They don’t even come close.” Chuck Ellis, Chief Data Scientist, Cut+Dry.
The single biggest benefit of a great online catalog is a sales boost.?
While this fact is well-established, we’d like to back this claim with our data. Our research into an online distributor catalog's impact on sales shows that it can increase online sales revenues by 23% on average.?
Our deep dive into the sales volumes of 5 of our distributor partners shows that, on average, catalog management and marketing yields $290,000 in additional monthly sales. This works in two ways: customers discover new products by browsing the detailed catalog or through Cut+Dry’s suggestive selling modules embedded into the catalog. The modules include Top Picks, Don’t Forget to Order, Compare Similar Items, and Items Recommended For You. The catalog revenue is completely additional to the distributor as their customers were not ordering these items from them before.
Every time an order is placed, an average of $170 in sales is added to the basket. This can translate to approximately $3 million+ more in annual sales revenues for our distributor partners. And getting this massive boost in sales doesn’t cost our distributor partners an arm and a leg, either.?
The ‘costs’ of investment include monthly SaaS fees and one-time set-up fees. If we consider the additional catalog revenue as the return, then their return on investment is 2000%+. Cut+Dry pays for itself in just 1.5 days.
What are some other benefits of a great online catalog??
A great online catalog filled with rich features like detailed product descriptions, high-quality images, and other interaction elements that enhance the customers’ shopping experience can have several benefits for your business.?
When your online catalog is searchable, it makes it very easy for your customers to discover new products. Customers can input keywords, apply filters, and navigate product categories to locate the products they need. Advanced search algorithms and filters can further assist by narrowing down options efficiently. Efficient product search functionalities save time for customers, they can shop faster, leading to increased customer satisfaction. And don’t worry about typos and spelling mistakes; ‘fuzzy search’ takes into account these little mistakes and still gives you exactly what your customer had in mind.?
E-commerce platforms use various strategies for product discovery, such as personalized recommendations, cross-selling, and upselling. Machine learning algorithms analyze user behavior, purchase history, and preferences to suggest complementary or relevant products. Product discovery helps customers discover new products or alternatives that they might not have been aware of initially. It can lead to increased sales as well as a more comprehensive understanding of available offerings.
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According to a study by Sana Commerce, cart abandonment rates in B2B businesses are a staggering 70%. Although we don’t know the exact cart abandonment rates in the Foodservice industry, it is an important factor to consider when designing an online shopping experience. Customers tend to abandon their carts for a variety of reasons; being unsure about the product they are looking at, uncertainty about shipping costs and delivery times, just forgetting, etc.? But a great online catalog that addresses all these ‘touch and feel’ elements of shopping, paired with transparent, upfront information, can significantly improve these rates.?
Gone are the days of having to print bulky catalogs to send to customers. Online catalogs can be updated in real-time and regularly so your customers know exactly what items you carry. This is great for seasonal food items and for introducing new products, features, and improvements. Keeping the catalog fresh and updated encourages customers to return and explore your latest offerings, boosting customer engagement.
Did you know that 20-30% of retail e-commerce sales are returned? While this is not a direct reflection of the B2B e-commerce space, the reasons for return are of interest. Returns usually stem from product dissatisfaction and discrepancy between the real product and the way it's described. Detailed product descriptions and high-quality images can help set accurate expectations for customers. When they receive the product as described and pictured, dissatisfaction and subsequent returns are less likely. This contributes to a positive customer experience and reduces the burden on your customer support team.
Don’t just listen to us, here’s what our partners say
Southwest Traders - $7.14M New Online Revenue (28% increase year-over-year)
“Within one year of working with Cut+Dry, our sales rep productivity doubled, sales expenses were cut in half, and sales increased by over 25%. All of this is directly related to us leveraging Cut+Dry. I can’t make these numbers up.” - Terry Walsh, President of Southwest Traders
BiRite Foodservice -? $2.16M New Online Sales within 4 months of launching
“We’ve seen unbelievable results after adopting Cut+Dry. Within 4 months of launching, we have over 700 customers ordering online, have processed over $18M in orders, and generated an additional $2M in revenue. Cut+Dry is a game changer for the Foodservice industry!” - Aaron Barulich, President of BiRite Foodservice
Conclusion
The platform, with its highly structured and standardized product data, provides distributors with a comprehensive and visually appealing catalog, sparing them from the time-consuming and costly process of building their own. Our distributor partners experience an average increase in online sales revenues by 23%, translating to an additional $290,000 in monthly sales for distributor partners.?
The embedded suggestive selling modules further contribute to this success, driving customer engagement and adding an average of $170 in sales to each order. The return on investment is striking, with a nearly 2000% return when considering the boost in sales against the incurred monthly SaaS fees and one-time set-up fees.
Cut+Dry not only addresses the challenges faced by independent Foodservice distributors in terms of cost-prohibitive investments in e-commerce but also propels them into a new era where they can provide a sophisticated and user-friendly shopping experience to customers relatively quickly. Cut+Dry pays for itself in just 1.5 days, so it is the perfect cost-and-time efficient solution for all independent Foodservice distributors.