Alumenti Homewares design and manufacture wholesale high-end homewares out of aluminium and stainless steel. Their unique homewares are locally designed, and the striking colours and designs ensure they will receive many admiring glances from your dinner guests.
Pieter Meiring is Alumenti’s owner-operator-picker-packer, who after spending 17 years managing a company in the corporate world, decided he wanted to retire. However, in January 2014 he learnt about Alumenti Homewares, saw the product, fell in love with it, and the rest as they say, is history.
The Problem - Wholesale Inventory Management
When Pieter purchased Alumenti Homewares it had a number of components to the business. Product was manufactured in India before being shipped to New Zealand, before distributing to boutique retailers throughout New Zealand and Australia. He then began attending trade shows to sell his product, and as demand for Alumenti products grew, Pieter needed to be able to keep up and ensure he knew where his stock was at any given time.
This meant introducing a wholesale inventory management system that provided accurate and up-to-date information, and after being recommended Unleashed by our platform partner Xero, Pieter signed up and hasn’t looked back. He also admits it is not always easy for him finding his way around a computer, but found Unleashed to be an intuitive and user-friendly system.
The Solution
Since implementing Unleashed in January 2014, Pieter has noticed a big difference, and says it’s great to know exactly where his wholesale stock is, whether he’s in the office or on the road. Pieter uses Unleashed for all aspects of his wholesale inventory management, including receiving stock, creating orders for his suppliers, processing sales and preparing invoices. He also regularly attends trade shows with the aim of growing the network of stores stocking Alumenti products, and loves that he is able to use Unleashed to create sales quotes and orders while he is out of the office.
But one of the things Pieter loves the most about Unleashed is the support he has received from the customer engagement team, saying “the support I get from Unleashed is just amazing - I can’t think of anytime they haven’t been able to solve the issue”.
The Result
When we asked Pieter Meiring what success would look like for Alumenti Homewares, his answer was being able to work only two hours a day yet grow revenue year-on-year.
It sounds like a dream to so many of us, but for Pieter this is his reality, and he credits Unleashed for this, calling it “an integral part of the business”, even going so far as to say, “if I don’t have Unleashed, I can’t run my business”.
