Ecobar Case: How RetailCRM Helped Cope with a 10-Fold Increase in Orders and Scale the Business

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The story of a Belarusian hypermarket with customer-oriented service
01.03.2024 ⏱ 15 minutes
Ecobar Case: How to Scale a Business and Maintain “Soulfulness”
Ecobar is a Belarusian hypermarket of eco-products, cosmetics and household goods. They started with a few items and 3-5 orders per day, and now the company's assortment includes 3000+ products from 110 brands and 10 times more orders.

How RetailCRM helped scale the business andlatvia phone numbers maintain a personalized approach to each client is described in the case.
"As long as there were 3-5 orders per day, we were doing well. Everything changed when there were 3 times more of them"
"RetailCRM is the most understandable, functional and tailored system for e-commerce"
"We went beyond superfoods and became a real online hypermarket"
"We didn't just get rid of chaos, but got a fully digitalized omnichannel business" "
We strengthened communications with clients and made them more targeted"
Results
"As long as there were 3-5 orders a day, we were doing well. Everything changed when there were 3 times more of them"
Ecobar appeared in 2014. At first, the company was engaged in selling packaging, but later the director saw superfoods at one of the exhibitions. At that time, few people in Belarus had heard of them, so the new product attracted attention.

The first samples of the product were bought right at the exhibition, and from that moment on, the project was dedicated to healthy eating. There were no high expectations: they worked more "on the idea" than "on profit".
Ecobar website
Ecobar website
The first customers came from local thematic markets and social networks. At first, the store processed 3-5 orders a day and had time to devote to customer service. The brand tried to inspire trust in customers and provide them with an individual approach.

For example, to make delivery as convenient as possible for customers, Ecobar took into account the presence of children and their age. The courier was notified that he was arriving during "quiet hours", and instead of calling, he wrote a message to the customer - so as not to wake anyone up.

Also, with repeat orders, the manager always discussed with the customer his impressions of the purchase and recommended something similar from what he himself had tried.
How to Improve Customer Experience in Online Retail
“Thanks to this approach, such warm relationships were established with some customers that when the first Ecobar manager was promoted to another department, people still asked to invite him for consultations” — Irina Yanushkevich, Deputy Director of Ecobar
The number of customers grew: they liked to buy in a store with a "non-Belarusian" service. When the number of orders grew to 300-400 per month, problems with the organization of the company's internal processes arose.
"The first years after the launch of the online store, our processes remained disjointed. We processed orders within the site's admin panel, duplicated them in Google Docs, and managed clients there.
Accounting for warehouse balances was completely separate, in accounting programs."
Irina Yanushkiewicz
Irina Yanushkiewicz
Deputy Director of Ecobar
Because of working in different systems, managers started making mistakes:

1. They could lose an order or, conversely, assemble the same one twice — because it was difficult to track orders.

2. There were errors in assembly. The order could be assembled incorrectly, and the client would not receive what he paid for. It was necessary to issue a return or replacement, resend the parcel by courier or mail.