Outdoor Retail Industry Turns To NetSuite Cloud For Business Transformation

SAN MATEO, Calif., Sept. 9, 2014 /PRNewswire/ -- NetSuite Inc. (NYSE: N), the industry's leading provider of cloud-based financials / ERP and omnichannel commerce software suites, today announced continued momentum and new customer wins in the outdoor retail market as manufacturers, distributors and retailers of products for outdoor and fitness enthusiasts turn to cloud business management for rapid business growth. The new customer wins announced today include Slingshot Sports, FootBalance North America and Grape Solar. While Slingshot Sports is using NetSuite SuiteCommerce to power end-to-end omnichannel commerce that seamlessly connects ecommerce to order management, inventory, merchandising, marketing, financials and customer service; FootBalance North America and Grape Solar report that they have transformed vital business processes with NetSuite's integrated solution for financials / ERP, to manage their wholesale distribution business, eliminating needless manual work, gaining real-time transparency and capitalizing on new opportunities.

These business improvements translate into breakthrough agility and a competitive edge for NetSuite customers in the fast-growing outdoor retail market, which the Outdoor Retail Association reports grew in the U.S. 6.8 percent in June 2014 over the previous year, to nearly $1.2 billion.

Outdoor retailers are capitalizing on this growth with NetSuite and focusing their resources on product innovation, customer service, brand marketing and expanding the business across new markets and geographies. For many outdoor retail NetSuite users, SuiteCommerce is in place to drive ecommerce sales in both B2B and B2C channels, while the NetSuite OneWorld global business management solution and its support for 190 currencies, 19 languages and automated tax compliance in 50 countries is instrumental in helping others conduct international business and manage multi-entity operations. Outdoor product merchants running NetSuite report growth in the double digits or better by expanding penetration across specialty retailers as well as well-known chains such as the Sports Authority, REI, Dick's Sporting Goods and L.L. Bean.

With NetSuite's cloud solution, outdoor product merchants have eliminated the cost and complexity of in-house servers and software and the need to engage large IT departments and/or costly third-party consultants for systems maintenance. With NetSuite, a growing number of outdoor product companies have gained the ability to:

• Convert leads to orders, orders to shipments and shipments to revenue with NetSuite's advanced warehouse, inventory management and order fulfillment capabilities.
• Improve supply chain operations with integrated inventory and order management, and building demand forecasts with real-time data, reducing excess inventory and the risk of stock outs.
• Gain a real-time, 360-degree view of customers and provide better customer service through NetSuite's seamless integration of CRM with financials and other back-office systems.
• Allow data to flow seamlessly to wholesale distributors and their trading partners, to ensure communication is in lockstep with the same data, audit trails and real-time accuracy at every stage.
• Manage all transactions and associated customer interactions regardless of touchpoint.

"The outdoor retail market is full of opportunities for growth, and it's great to see our customers take advantage by transforming their financial and operational processes in the NetSuite cloud," said Ranga Bodla, Senior Director, NetSuite Industry Marketing. "The successes that our customers describe in growing their businesses simply couldn't have been achieved in their previous environments of fragmented on-premise applications."

SuiteCommerce Delivers Superior Online Shopping Experiences to B2B Customers

NetSuite is helping companies like Slingshot Sports grow their B2B business and streamline business operations

Slingshot Sports (www.slingshotsports.com), a manufacturer of kiteboards, wakeboards and stand-up paddleboards for watersports enthusiasts, has more than doubled its revenue and expanded its business across 54 countries since replacing Sage Peachtree with NetSuite in 2007. Based in Hood River, Ore., Slingshot relies on NetSuite to run virtually every aspect of its business, including use of Work Orders and Assemblies to manufacture kiteboards and wakeboards at its 20,000-square-foot facility in North Bonneville, Wash., an American-made distinction important in growing the business. Slingshot has expanded its retail partners to more than 450 in the U.S., recently introducing a B2B ecommerce portal on SuiteCommerce that has grown to handle 25 percent of orders in just four months, with a 50 to 75 percent rate expected in 2015 and beyond. NetSuite CRM has helped improve sales rep productivity and customer satisfaction, while NetSuite hosts all case management information for speedy and informed resolution. Slingshot uses NetSuite OneWorld to manage its new Moonshine MFG subsidiary, producing long skateboards that will debut this fall, and uses budgeting and forecasting software from NetSuite partner Adaptive Insights for strategic planning. "The biggest benefit of NetSuite is scalability and how we can grow so quickly with it," said Greg Kish, Slingshot Sales and Marketing Director. "NetSuite gives us one system as a single source of the truth, and it can be easily customized to our needs. It's leaps and bounds beyond what we could do with our own network and software."

NetSuite's Integrated Cloud Business Management Platform Brings End-to-End Business Visibility, Transforming Business Efficiency

Outdoor retailers like FootBalance North America and Grape Solar are using NetSuite to expand their geography and achieve new efficiencies.

FootBalance North America (www.footbalance.com), the North American subsidiary of the Finland-based manufacturer of custom-made and premolded insoles for athletes and others who care about foot health, implemented NetSuite in March 2013 in moving from an outsourced accounting provider that ran Microsoft Dynamics GP. The move enabled the San Diego-based distributor to enhance its business controlling while maintaining a lean cost structure. Selected over SAP BusinessOne and Microsoft Dynamics NAV, NetSuite has given FootBalance greater productivity and important anywhere, anytime data access in the cloud. Launched in the U.S. in 2009, the company has reduced its financial close time from seven to as little as three days while achieving double-digit growth and expanding its retail partner network across more than 200 U.S. locations. NetSuite OneWorld is in place to manage an office in Canada and enable multi-currency transactions using Canadian and U.S. dollars, while FootBalance relies on an EDI solution from NetSuite partner SPS Commerce to automate transactions with larger retailers. "We knew we needed to improve our reporting and user experience," said Jeremy Town, FootBalance Managing Director. "NetSuite is much more robust. By moving from Great Plains to NetSuite, we have a much cleaner view of how transactions move through the system and greatly enhanced reporting."

Grape Solar (www.grapesolar.com), a manufacturer of solar panels and other equipment aimed principally at homeowners and commercial installations, has used NetSuite's flexibility to help launch a new line of portable products for outdoor enthusiasts. Based in Eugene, Ore., Grape Solar this year introduced small folding solar panels and battery packs that hikers, bicyclists and others use to power such devices as phones, tablets and GPS units. Grape Solar's new outdoor products line builds on the success it has achieved since launching the business on NetSuite in 2009, with sales doubling annually in recent years. By launching on NetSuite, Grape Solar made the strategic decision to avoid the risk of outgrowing the capabilities of an entry-level system, as well as the problems of managing disparate systems. Grape Solar retail products are sold through 20 retailers including Home Depot, Lowe's, Sears, Costco, Menards and others, with an EDI solution from NetSuite partner SPS Commerce to streamline transactions; the OzLINK solution from Oz Development helps improve shipping speed and precision. Grape Solar uses NetSuite to automate purchasing with 50 suppliers while inventory management delivers visibility and control over more than 1,000 SKUs. "NetSuite being very modular has allowed the system to grow with us very seamlessly," said Chad Ash, Senior Sales / Customer Service Representative. "The visibility into day-to-day operations we have with NetSuite enables us to be very data-centric in our decisions because all our information is in one place."

NetSuite SuiteCommerce enables B2C and B2B merchants, manufacturers and distributors to seamlessly connect every step of a multi-channel, multi-location business—from ecommerce, POS and order management to merchandising, marketing, inventory, financials and customer support. Featuring an advanced webstore that allows the creation of uniquely branded and personalized shopping experiences optimized for multiple devices, SuiteCommerce empowers businesses to run across multiple touchpoints—web, brick-and-mortar stores, social, mobile—all from a single, unified cloud-based commerce system that provides unprecedented visibility into your business and customers.

Today, more than 20,000 companies and subsidiaries depend on NetSuite to run complex, mission-critical business processes globally in the cloud. Since its inception in 1998, NetSuite has established itself as the leading provider of enterprise-class cloud financials/ERP suites for divisions of large enterprises and mid-sized organizations seeking to upgrade their antiquated client/server ERP systems. NetSuite excels at streamlining business operations as demonstrated in a recent Gartner study naming NetSuite as the fastest growing financial management software vendor on a global basis. NetSuite continues its success in delivering the best cloud ERP/financials suites to businesses around the world, enabling them to lower IT costs significantly while increasing productivity, as the global adoption of the cloud is accelerating.

Follow NetSuite's Cloud blog, NetSuite's Facebook page and @NetSuite Twitter handle for real-time updates.

For more information about NetSuite, please visit www.netsuite.com.

For more information about SuiteCommerce, please visit www.netsuite.com/suitecommerce.

NOTE: NetSuite and the NetSuite logo are service marks of NetSuite Inc. Third-party trademarks mentioned are the property of their respective owners.

Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20090924/SF81218LOGO-b

SOURCE NetSuite Inc.