Tool and homeware supplier Helton Tool & Home is using Texas-based Brightpearl’s retail operating system to transform its multichannel operations.

The online home improvement brand should benefit from having Brightpearl’s technology in place as its central source of truth, and have access to made-for-retail features including an automation engine and inventory planner tool.

With Brightpearl simplifying, automating and streamlining the merchant’s complex retail operations, Helton Tool & Home can redirect its time towards innovation and growth.

Arizona-based but internet-born, Helton Tool & Home was launched in the early days of the web with a basic EBay store in 1999. With a focus on quality power tools as well as home products such as cookware, cutlery and food storage, all reasonably priced and quickly delivered, the once small business has become a thriving, multichannel ecommerce outfit. It now sells many household brands via its BigCommerce web store as well as EBay, Amazon FBA, Amazon FBM, Walmart, Walmart WFS, Sears and via phone sales, direct to consumers and to tradespeople worldwide.

As Helton Tool & Home saw business boom its former warehouse management system (WMS) started to buckle under rapid growth. With a basic WMS and a high number of SKUs, the brand sought a retail operating system that could streamline and automate time-heavy processes and pull its numerous workflows and channels into one central hub.

Brightpearl’s out-of-the-box, made-for-retail features include a library of plug-and-play integrations, which can quickly extend to the brand’s existing apps such as EBay, Amazon FBA, Amazon FBM, Walmart and Walmart WFS, and make syncing with the brand’s BigCommerce web store seamless. This agile connectability also gives the merchant the flexibility to adopt any apps and channels it chooses to use as it scales, all in a few clicks.

The automation engine, which automates and streamlines processes in ordering, warehouse, inventory, shipping and fulfilment – as well as complicated workflows in bundling and drop-shipping – means employees are freed up to focus their attention on innovation and growth.

Helton Tool & Home’s outdated demand-forecasting has been improved with the inventory planner, which provides data-driven sales predictions and inventory management, so staff can make smarter, faster buying decisions.

Importantly, with Brightpearl in place as its central source of truth, Helton Tool & Home should benefit from real-time performance insights and 360-degree visibility across its entire business – that’s all channels, operations and departments – resulting in a reporting capability that could power the brand towards growth.

“Our prior WMS did not provide accurate information on inventory levels,” said Jack Helton from Helton Tool & Home. “As a result, we were forced to purchase up to double the amount of needed inventory in order to avoid overselling our products. In the short time that we have been using Brightpearl’s retail operating system, we have been able to normalise our inventory with Brightpearl’s Inventory Planner Premium, which forecasts our needs accurately. This is an absolute game changer.”

Justin Press, senior vice president at Brightpearl, added: “Helton Tool & Home came to us at a crucial time for the business as it sought to revamp its operational infrastructure to support its route to rapid, multichannel success. We’re so pleased that with Brightpearl’s agile retail operating system, barriers to growth are removed and the Helton team can scale up with confidence. With Brightpearl, they’ve found the ultimate toolkit, one that will propel them into a hyper-scalable future.”

Based in Bristol in the UK and Austin in Texas, Brightpearl provides a retail operating system (ROS) for retailers and wholesalers. Its goal is to automate the back office. The ROS includes financial management, inventory and sales order management, purchasing and supplier management, CRM, fulfilment, warehouse and logistics. In addition, the operating system has connectors to the major ecommerce platforms, including Magento, BigCommerce and Shopify. Brightpearl’s platform manages over ten million transactions and $5bn of business a year.

In 2022, Brightpearl became part of the Sage Group, combining Sage Intacct and Brightpearl for retailers and wholesalers.