Success story Scenery Workshop

Managing a webshop takes a lot of time and sometimes results in hectic periods. You could easily assume this consumes all available time at hand. Yet Patrick van der Heijden combines a full-time job with running his Scenery Workshop webshop. By making smart use of outsourcing and the right tools, he manages to run his shop successfully in the evenings. Patrick has been using Optiply since early 2020. In this article we will further discuss how Optiply manages to optimise and partially automate the purchasing of Scenery Workshop.

Born from passion

Scenery Workshop provides its customers with everything they need to build a miniature world. Patrick van der Heijden’s webshop was created 10 years ago from his own interest in miniature worlds. As sales and stock continued to grow, there came a point where things had to be outsourced and optimised. Patrick explains “Three years ago, the decision was made to use fulfilment and to outsource a part of the marketing. However, with an extensive range of products, inventory challenges remained unresolved. I was looking for something that could provide us more control and data insights about products. Some items are sold out within a day and others remain on the shelf for months. I wanted to have a clearer picture of that. That is how we ended up at Optiply. ”

The choice for Optiply

Patrick had already tried a number of other things for the shop built with Lightspeed. Previously, they already used a simple purchasing tool, which somewhat helped the ordering process. When Optiply came around, within a few conversations it was clear to Patrick that he could make a profit in this area. “With Optiply we have a clear picture of which products sell quickly and which products sell less often. This way, we have much more control over the purchasing and availability of our stock. We notice the Optiply software understands our situation better each day, which creates confidence and peace of mind.” Patrick said.

Optimised assortment and healthy stock levels

Now Optiply has been running for some time, the results are clearly visible. “We now clearly see which products are important and which sell fast. This way, we have been able to improve the service levels for our bestsellers and slow-sellers. Since we started using Optiply, our turnover has increased by at least 20 percent. I only count economically, because I do not want to include the impact of Corona. But thanks to Optiply, we were prepared for the enormous demand we, as a hobby webshop, received during quarantine. Some people may think 299 pounds a month is a lot, but it is worth it to us. We prevent dead stock, stock hardly sold, and have a much clearer vision on items that do not sell at all. Furthermore, we are sure that we have more than enough available inventory when it comes to our top range, so we are always able to provide our customers with their desired products. Here at Scenery Shop, product availability has increased by 30 percent thanks to Optiply. Fantastic! ”