ANIMAL SUPPLY CO.
Principal Product & Experience Strategist · Bottle Rocket · 2017–2020 · B2B Ecommerce · Product Strategy
Animal Supply Co. is a national distributor of high-end pet products, supplying independent boutique retailers across the country. Their challenge was competing against Amazon and Chewy, and helping their retailer customers do the same. What began as a B2B ecommerce engagement grew into a multi-year digital transformation partnership spanning a national ordering platform, native iOS and Android apps, a digital buying show, and a strategic communications function that extended to the boardroom and investor process. I led product strategy and experience design throughout, and watched adoption exceed even the most optimistic projections.
CONTEXT
B2B tools that work like the B2C tools they already know.
B2B ecommerce for a wholesale distributor sounds straightforward, but the user here is a small-business owner trying to run a store, not a purchasing manager with time to learn a complex platform. Research confirmed it: most of Animal Supply's retailer customers had low technology proficiency and were more familiar with B2C shopping patterns than B2B procurement tools. That shaped every design decision across all three surfaces. It also meant that adoption required change management as much as good design, Sales managers resisted encouraging digital ordering for fear of losing their relationship value, and many retailers were simply set in their habits.
THE ECOMMERCE PLATFORM
Retailers were placing orders by phone or fax. They needed digital ordering that was fast enough to actually save them time, and familiar enough that they would use it.
The platform connected legacy back-end systems to a new OroCommerce foundation while delivering an experience modeled on the B2C patterns retailers already understood. The roadmap pushed OroCommerce to expand their platform's capabilities in ways that benefited their broader user base, and required IT partners to build new coordination processes across every layer of the stack. ASC was building a serious internal digital team for the first time. The engagement grew alongside them.
MOBILE FOR THE STORE FLOOR
Retailers needed to serve customers on the floor without stopping to go back to a desktop. Mobile tools gave them that flexibility.
OroCommerce had not yet built mobile APIs for their platform. Working with their team and a middleware partner to close that gap, we built a native iOS and Android experience that used native app capabilities for speed and convenience. Retailers could browse, check inventory, and place orders from anywhere in the store. Special orders were a common customer request. The app made it easy to add items to the next delivery without leaving the customer interaction.
Mobile customers in the West region placed orders with an average value 20% higher than on the legacy website. Mobile users across all regions averaged an order value of $1,009.
KILLING PAPER
Two of the most painful processes in Animal Supply's operation ran entirely on paper. Both became targets.
Returns were initiated by phone, fax, email, or paper form, then manually entered into back-end systems, routed through drivers and operations, and resolved over an average of ten days. ASC was handling 30,000 return requests per month at a cost of $35,000 in monthly fees. The new process initiated from the web or app, routed automatically, and resolved in one to three days with real-time visibility for the retailer throughout.
Promotions required up to 40 minutes of manual setup each across four ERPs, a 3.5 FTE burden before a single order was placed. With 11 pricing regions and 11,000 promotions per year, the math was brutal. At trade shows, nearly the entire booth was dedicated to printing and manually entering orders with show discounts. The digital solution centralized promotion management, gave retailers real-time exposure to active promotions, and routed show orders directly through the platform.
DIGITAL BUYING SHOW
Buying shows are a significant event in the retailer calendar, where vendors offer discounts and retailers plan their inventory for the season. The existing process was paper, manual entry, and booths staffed largely to process orders rather than build relationships.
The digital buying show replaced that process with event-based native app and website experiences, QR codes for accessing product and brand content, and tools for direct retailer-to-sales-representative communication. The results were significant gains in participation and transaction volume. It was also the final milestone on the roadmap to 80% digital order volume in the West region. The feature closed the gap between where adoption was and where the business needed it to be.
STRATEGY AND COMMUNICATIONS
As the engagement deepened, the strategic role expanded. ASC needed more than a product team. They needed help telling the story of what they were building and why it mattered: to their own organization, to their retail partners, and to the investors evaluating the platform's potential.
I became the go-to resource for creating materials that explained the market shift, communicated the platform's value to different audiences, and gave ASC leadership the tools to evangelize the transformation internally. A guiding principles framework shaped the product roadmap and ensured every feature decision stayed connected to the business strategy. When the investor process began, supporting that storytelling became a meaningful part of the engagement.
The 2016-to-2020 arc told its own story: from no digital strategy, no team, and no budget, to a unified national ecommerce platform, a native mobile app, and a scalable back-end infrastructure. Adoption numbers made the case.
