Alex Campbell, co-founder of Good Buzz, stopped consuming alcohol eight years ago but his wife, Amber, wanted to give him an alternative that he could take to barbeques and social functions. They found that kombucha, a fermented sweetened tea, had the same flavour profile as beer but without the alcohol! Four years later in 2014, Good Buzz was founded.
In a short span of time, Good Buzz has grown in leaps and bounds. They moved to Tauranga, grew their team, and set up a 600 square meter facility. “We’ve gone from selling at farmer’s markets to having over 1,500 retailers nationwide and growing,” says Alex. Now they’re stocked in cafes, health food shops, supermarkets, gyms, even some bars.
When production becomes a guessing game
When Belinda Kerr-Ridge, Good Buzz’s Accounting Manager, first joined they didn’t have a clear view of their production and couldn’t manage everything from start to finish. “Everything was a guessing game,” explains Belinda. They also didn’t have an EDI connection with Unleashed. This meant that they were having to manually enter stockists’ orders into the system.Picking the right tools for the job
“Adopting Unleashed has enabled us to effectively and efficiently track our product a lot more,” says Belinda. This means that they are quickly able to recognise if they have stock available, and where their stock is located. Once they had their integration set up, they were able to get all their stockists’ orders automatically entered into their system."Unleashed really is the backbone of our organisation"Before Unleashed, Good Buzz were making 30,000 litres a month and had seven SKUs. Now, they’re producing about 100,000 litres a month and have added six more SKUs. As Alex explains, “Unleashed has been able to accommodate the growing number of transactions every month. We haven’t had to employ more staff, but our transactions have increased by 250% since we started using Unleashed.” For Belinda, Unleashed has allowed her to manage her time better. Instead of spending time on data entry, she’s now free to use that time more effectively on reporting and forecasting. Unleashed helps Alex and his team manage his business. From handling all their production requirements, through to managing their inventory and dealing with sales distribution, it is a key component to their work. “As a small but growing company you really need confidence in the software tools that you have and Unleashed gives you that confidence,” says Alex.
"We find Unleashed support incredibly beneficial for our business. If we come into any kind of issue, we simply contact one of the team at the customer service desk and they're able to help us with this problem as soon as possible."As Good Buzz continues to grow and expand their reach to more cafes, grocery stores, bars, restaurants, they know that they can rely on to tools they have and consider overseas opportunities too!
