It's Full Speed Ahead For Bay Area Powersports

Established in 2005, Bay Area Power Sports provides power sports products to thousands of customers yearly. They started offering ATV & Dirt Bike parts, and their product lines expanded as they grew. They provide various RV and marine equipment, repair services, fuel systems, and in-house manufacturing. They ship thousands of products every week in the US and worldwide.  Their company’s growth allows them to offer lower prices than top-name brands and provide their customers with the best value for their money. In addition, with the ability to manufacture their in-house products, they skip the middleman and provide savings directly to their customers.

Industry Verticals

• Recreational Vehicle Equipment
• Marine Equipment
• Repair Services
• Brake Pads
• Fuel Systems
• Manufacturing
• Direct-to-Customer (D2C) sales

Initial Findings

Bay Area Power Sports was using WebShop Manager as their ecommerce platform. They hosted their website and managed product data on this platform. Bay Area Power Sports increased sales through external marketplaces like Amazon, eBay, and Walmart. To manage these marketplace sales, they chose Rithum (formerly ChannelAdvisor) as their ecommerce platform to collect the product data across multiple channels. They also used ShipStation for shipping and the payment solutions PayPal and Authorize.net. With our extensive knowledge and understanding of how each piece relates to the other and the potential limitations of using WebShop Manager, we knew they needed a platform that would integrate all the moving parts to their sales channels and help them customize and scale their ecommerce website.

The Challenge

Each platform Bay Area Powersports used was siloed from one another and caused issues when it came to integrating the third-party solutions under one single application. If they wanted to scale the WebShop Manager website to avoid this issue, they’d have to spend significant time and money developing the right system.

Data Sync Capability

Bay Area Motor Sports have a custom data class called “Fits.” This data matches parts with specific products that are compatible with each other. For example, a boat fuel cable may only be compatible with one particular brand and type of motor. This data drove the product detail on the front-end of their website and impacted their ability to display accurate product descriptions or inventory.

Because of this custom data class, the product data was entered manually. This data entry included product descriptions, compatibility, and inventory availability. However, manually entering the data was tedious and time-consuming, increasing the risk of purchasing and fulfillment mistakes. It created frustration for their end-consumer as well. Because of the precise product information, and risked purchasing incompatible products or out-of-stock items on Bay Area’s different marketplaces.

Payments

PayPal and Authorize.net integrated with Bay Area’s PayPal business account but did not sync with WebShop Manager. To use WebShop Manager’s tax functions, they had to manually export payment and invoice data and import it into WebShop Manager. Like the product data sync, this manual process caused them to spend considerable time and effort uploading data, verifying the accuracy, and managing payment data. Bay Area needed a direct sync between the payment solution and the ecommerce platform.

The Solution

We reviewed Bay Area Power Sports’ experience with their current platform and identified the multiple issues with manual data entry and verification of correct information. As a result, we needed to provide a solution that integrated all third-party solutions into a single ecommerce platform and provided a straightforward solution that provided the solutions necessary to decrease manual data entry and the expense of incorrect order fulfillment and shipping.

We determined that BigCommerce was the right solution for their needs. BigCommerce’s cloud-based SaaS platform decreases Bay Area’s web hosting costs to zero. In addition, BigCommerce offered everything Bay Area Power Sports needed in data sync capabilities, product information, and integrated payments. Using BigCommerce, Kensium also built native integrations with the following:

• Rithum (formerly ChannelAdvisor)
• PayPal
• Authorize.net
• Shipstation

Later in the project, Kensium added the following tools:

• FedEx
• USP
• Google Analytics

Leveraging BigCommerce, we used Rithum (formerly ChannelAdvisor) as a single-source-of-truth by entering all data into Rithum (formerly ChannelAdvisor) and automatically syncing it to BigCommerce. Usually, data is entered into BigCommerce and sourced from there. Still, with the customization available, we could use Rithum (formerly ChannelAdvisor) as the primary data collection source fed to the BigCommerce platform.

Implementing Rithum (formerly ChannelAdvisor) as the central product information database aligned with the company’s sales and product strategy and allowed Bay Area Power Sports to undercut name-brand parts’ prices and increase their sales on external marketplaces. In addition, the BigCommerce platform ensured that all product, payment, and shipping information was accurate across the board, creating a smoother purchase process for their customers and freeing up their back-office to work more efficiently.

Take Away

When a company needs to streamline processes, create a single-source-of-truth, and provide an easy and accurate purchase process, Kensium steps up to the plate. Again, we understand the right platform for the customer; in this case, the winner is BigCommerce. The BigCommerce platform provided all the tools, integration, and customization needed to provide a robust Bay Area Power Sports platform.

Our collaboration with Bay Area allowed them to provide competitive product pricing on marketplaces and direct sales from their website. We also found that by helping them use a single source of truth for data and payment information, they allowed their back-office to focus on essential tasks and skip the repetitive functions of downloading, uploading, and entering data across platforms.

Leave The Competition In Your Wake

Kensium is an Elite Partner with BigCommerce and the official commerce partner with Acumatica. With our industry experience and knowledge of the commerce industry, we are uniquely positioned to provide businesses with a custom solution to fit their needs and grow as you grow. So let us put our knowledge and expertise to work for you! Contact us today and learn how we provide a total end-to-end solution for your business needs.