How Linen House streamlined its clunky backend system
NetSuite provider Annexa helped leading homewares retailer put the right system in place to scale.
Linen House is a well-known Australian textile homewares brand with a reputation for quality manufacturing and creative design. Established in Melbourne in 1993, Linen House offers a wide range of bed linen, homewares, living, bathroom and dining products, which are stocked in some of the country’s biggest retail chains, including Domayne, Forty Winks, Harris Scarfe, Myer and Snooze.
Over the years, the business has expanded beyond its roots as a purely wholesale business to include an e-commerce arm, which launched in 2013, as well as 25 stand-alone outlet stores nationwide. It also has expanded internationally, with partner companies operating under the Linen House banner in New Zealand, South Africa and Singapore.
“Our enduring success lends itself to staying creative in a competitive market, maintaining design integrity and manufacturing quality products while remaining 100% Australian-owned,” the brand states on its website.
But while Linen House’s shift to becoming an omnichannel retailer was a boon for customers, enabling them to shop when and how they want, it also introduced complexities in backend operations, making it difficult for the business to grow and scale with its existing systems.
That’s when Linen House turned to Annexa, a NetSuite ERP provider and integration specialist.
Manual system hindering growth
Like many legacy retailers, Linen House had an on-premise ERP solution customised to fit its business processes and workflows, but the system had become clunky and time-consuming to maintain. Every few years, the IT team had to undertake resource-intensive system upgrades without receiving any additional business benefits.
As Linen House expanded, the lack of visibility between its systems only became more apparent and it was leading to real problems, such as fragmented and inaccurate data and low productivity levels among employees, not to mention a negative impact on the customer experience.
It was clear Linen House could not retain its position in the market, let alone grow its share of the global homewares category, unless it adopted new technologies that could scale alongside the business. The ability to manage a supply chain across multiple continents and currencies was key.
“The quicker we can get things to our customers, the happier we are and the happier they are,” Tez Osman, IT director at Linen House, said.
Moving to a single source of truth
Linen House selected Annexa to replace its previous ERP solution with NetSuite OneWorld, a cloud-based solution with the features and flexibility required to grow its international business.
“Previous to NetSuite we had to manage all of our infrastructure ourselves, so moving away from something that was made internally was definitely a strategy choice, and we were pretty quick to decide that NetSuite was the way to go,” Osman said.
For Linen House, the fact that NetSuite could provide a single source of truth across all channels, including supply chain, warehousing, e-commerce and in-store point of sale, was a major drawcard, as well as real-time data and reporting.
“If a product is performing well, we can see in NetSuite where the sales have gone – how many units have sold in what channel – and it’s very easy to decide if we want to reorder,” Claire Duncan, marketing director at Linen House, said.
Achieving efficiency through automation and integration was also a key objective for Linen House, so Annexa took a holistic approach in designing the solution architecture, including a seamless Vend POS integration, integrations with online stores, EDI integrations with wholesale customer platforms and a WMS integration.
A true partnership
Throughout the implementation process, Annexa played a role as a trusted advisor and problem-solver, not only providing technical expertise and support but also recommending innovative systems and solutions to help Linen House achieve its goals.
“As an IT director, vendor management is a pain point in my role. But Annexa is right up there with the best vendors I work with. They have a really capable bunch of technical people so when they promise to deliver something, they do. They’re always working to get a great outcome for us,” Osman said.
Since the initial implementation, Annexa and Linen House have continued to work together collaboratively on a weekly basis to foster growth, making the journey one of true partnership.
“It’s not uncommon for them to reach out every couple of months and say, ‘I’ve seen this new function. I think it will be good for you,’” Osman added.
You get a real sense that everyone’s working toward the same outcome – to get the most out of your implementation, and to make sure that you’re using all the tools available to make life easier and more efficient, and Annexa do a really good job at that.Tez Osman, IT Director, Linen House
ENABLING SEAMLESS CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE
For Linen House, the impact of moving to NetSuite has been felt right across the business.
“For the marketing team, NetSuite’s been really great – it’s such an easy platform to use to check when stock is coming in,” Duncan said.
“We might have someone on Instagram saying, ‘I love that product, but it’s out of stock online.’ We can easily go in and say, ‘Don’t worry, it’ll be back in three weeks.”
Most importantly, the system has kept pace with Linen House’s rapid growth. Before implementing NetSuite, Linen House had just two retail stores, today it has 25, and it can add new locations to the system in a matter of minutes rather than weeks.
“Previous to Netsuite, it would take one or two weeks” to turn on a new store, Osman said. “We can now turn on a new store in 10 minutes.”
Finally, having an integrated supply chain and accounting system has been key to efficiently managing e-commerce demand in recent years.
“Because the brand’s growing so quickly, it’s really great that we can scale up, in terms of adding more stores, adding more channels online, adding more retailers,” Duncan added.
Ready to scale
Before working with Annexa to implement NetSuite, Linen House was investing significant time and resources in keeping its previous on-premise ERP solution up and running, and it couldn’t expand into new markets and channels as quickly and efficiently as it wanted to.
Now, it has visibility across all parts of the business, access to accurate and real-time data and seamless integrations between systems to operate efficiently as it grows. And with multi-currency and multi-country options, it’s ready to continue its international expansion.
Annexa and their team have definitely been a big part of that success. We see them as part of the Linen House family for sure.Tez Osman, IT Director, Linen House
