Case Study: The Tech Stack Consolidation That Reduced Costs & Improved Efficiency For This ASX Beauty Group

Project context & goals

ASX-listed brand aggregator Anagenics has a growing collection of premium beauty, health and wellness brands in its portfolio. A common pain point for brand aggregators is having separate, disjointed technologies and processes across brands. For Anagenics, this was inflating costs and creating inefficiencies.

Therefore, the group engaged Swanky’s Australian Shopify experts to help reduce group-level SaaS platform costs by consolidating the technologies and processes used across its multiple brands and their DTC Shopify websites.

Alongside its DTC operations, Anagenics also distributes some of the leading names in the beauty and skincare sector via its B2B distribution company, BLC Cosmetics.

The team were using Adept ERP as their B2B commerce solution, but this legacy portal was proving difficult to manage and provided a poor UX for buyers. Plus, having their B2B ecommerce operations on a different platform to the business’ DTC sites meant that the team were forced to context switch whenever they moved between B2B and DTC tasks.

As a result, the team engaged Swanky to migrate their BLC Cosmetics B2B operations to Shopify, a more modern commerce architecture that would bring consistency for teams.

They also required support in optimising their B2B marketing strategy to increase engagement with stockists and boost annual spend across accounts.

What we did

DTC tech stack consolidation

We completed a tech stack review across six of the group’s brand websites, providing consultation around how best to consolidate solutions. A key factor when we were recommending platforms was how well they integrate with other solutions.

A particular focus was on ensuring all email functions were on the same platform across brands – in this case, Klaviyo.

We also supported the consolidation of review apps and customer service tooling, leveraging Okendo and Gorgias respectively.

As well as facilitating cost savings, this consolidation project also produced efficiency gains by standardising and simplifying the store management process across brands. This means that staff can easily pivot between sites without needing time to familiarise themselves with different solutions and processes.

B2B migration to Shopify

We also provided consultation and implementation to align the group’s B2B tech with the solutions used across its DTC websites – thereby creating consistency for staff and increasing efficiency across the business.

As part of this, we completed a B2B migration from Adept to Shopify Plus in just five weeks.

A snapshot of BLC’s Shopify site homepage.

Named a “Leader” in the Forrester Wave™: Commerce Solutions for B2B, Shopify’s B2B functionality is evolving quickly, with new feature developments being announced regularly. It includes the hallmark features of Shopify’s powerful DTC capabilities, empowering B2B retailers to curate a customised end-to-end buying experience for users, whilst streamlining backend processes with advanced automations.

Read more about B2B commerce on Shopify.

B2B custom samples app

This project also included the creation of a custom samples app, which allows B2B buyers to unlock access to sample products for distribution at salons when they spend over a certain amount.

As well as encouraging increased B2B average order value, sampling aids product discovery and validation for end consumers in salons, driving future full-price purchases of regular pack sizes.

B2B lifecycle marketing support

Following the successful B2B migration to Shopify, we supported the BLC Cosmetics team with automated lifecycle marketing strategies which would:

• better engage stockists;
• encourage shorter buying cycles; and
• drive higher associated annual customer account values.

For example, the team can now leverage Klaviyo to send out a restock prompt to buyers, depending on their individual buying cadences. This sort of proactive, personalised and automated marketing wasn’t possible with their previous B2B tech stack, as the team had no behavioural analytics built into their marketing.

Another key automation we recommended was sending out cart reminders for abandoned orders – a feature that they couldn’t access previously via Adept.

Find out more about our Klaviyo marketing services.

Paid media support

We also provided digital marketing support to the Anagenics ecommerce team, running a combination of paid social and paid search ads across brands.

By collaborating tightly with the Anagenics team, we were able to improve ad performance and enable them to test and adopt new strategies, where in the past they only had capacity to maintain BAU campaign strategies.

Supporting new brand & tech integrations

Our work with Anagenics also involved supporting the integration of two new brands acquired in 2023, FaceMediSkin and ProDermal, as well as the integration of the group’s DTC and B2B businesses with a new 3PL partner, Invenco.

Consolidate your Shopify tech stack with Swanky

With a consolidated tech stack across its various DTC brand sites, as well as solution alignment with its B2B operations, brand aggregator Anagenics can now benefit from reduced group-level costs and improved overall efficiency.

To find out how Swanky can help your business with a tech stack consolidation project, please contact our friendly solutions team for an initial chat. We have plenty of experience working with standalone brands to large retail groups, across a spectrum of industries – including both DTC and B2B retailers.