Rug Company Scales Its Retail Partnerships Seamlessly with Jitterbit

The Company

Since its founding in 2008, this customer has built its reputation around its patented, machine-washable rugs — which include collections with well-known brands as well as collaborations with high-profile design icons.

The company is based out of and does much of its manufacturing in the United States, but has a growing presence in North America, Europe and Australia. For years, the company’s success was driven by its direct-to-consumer online brand channel alone. But while the business grew into a household name based on its ecommerce storefront, it recently saw an opportunity to expand into wholesale distribution via partnerships with established retailers.

The Use Case

When it began stepping outside its established sales channel and entered negotiations with its first B2B partners — a leading ecommerce site and a global discount store chain — the company tried to make do with some very simple integrations through the Shopify app. These integrations were all individually custom-built by the company’s engineers and product managers.

This worked well enough when 95% of sales were still going through their ecommerce storefront. But when they began looking to onboard a major warehouse club in 2024, they quickly realized that their current manual approach to managing orders wouldn’t support such growth, and the need for seamless EDI and partner integrations became urgent.

“As our business grew beyond direct-to-consumer into bigger wholesale and retail channels, we realized one-off integrations and point-to-point solutions were not sustainable options,” the company’s product manager said.

But the company had never had an EDI or iPaaS solution before, so any solution they adopted would have to be implemented from scratch — and critically, it would need to be sufficiently scalable to support future growth.

The Solution

“In order to be successful in B2B, outside our own original storefront, we needed automation, scalability and a trusted partner to help us get there,” the product manager shared. So he and his team began looking for a scalable iPaaS platform capable of supporting their business growth over the long term. They looked at five different vendors, but found most of them to be too rigid, not robust enough, or both.

The platform also had to work well with the processes already in place. “Our orders flow through both Shopify and NetSuite, based on whether it’s a direct-to-consumer order or whether it’s fulfillment to another retailer. The ability to integrate seamlessly with both was key,” he said.

When they began looking into Jitterbit, the Harmony platform’s flexibility, scalability, and transparent and predictable pricing model set it apart from the rest. But because the company had never had an EDI solution before, they teamed up with Jitterbit Professional Services for the initial, large warehouse club implementation.

“The level of communication with Jitterbit Professional Services was strong, and produced a strong deliverable with real business outcomes,” the company’s product manager said.

With Jitterbit Professional Services guiding the initial implementation, the company launched its first EDI connection in just six weeks — right on schedule.

Subsequent integrations have been exponentially faster. “What used to take weeks now takes days — in some cases, less than 24 hours,” he said.

The Results: Enabling Non-Technical Teams

Jitterbit EDI has not only enabled the company to scale operations, build internal capabilities and move faster, it’s done so without requiring a large IT team. “While the platform is powerful, it’s also intuitive and easy to use, even for nontechnical users,” the company’s product manager said. “Our product team was able to ramp up quickly and take full ownership of EDI integrations.”

And over the following months, the team continued to refine the onboarding process. “Our integrations in Jitterbit are reusable, scalable and easy to replicate. The platform lets a small team manage complex retail relationships without bottlenecks.”

The company now manages approximately 10,000 EDI documents per month across 15 retail and trading partners — all supported by a lean, nontechnical two-person team.

The product manager estimates that 95% of the company’s EDI workflows have been built by non-technical staff. “That’s a huge cost and productivity advantage,” he said. “Jitterbit helped us move faster and smarter, without adding headcount.”

What’s more, he credits Jitterbit with making complex EDI integrations accessible to those with a limited engineering background like him: He’s also seen his own skills increase in the time he’s used Jitterbit.

“Im not a developer by training,” he said. “Jitterbit’s intuitive UI and logical workflows helped me upskill quickly. I’ve developed a level of technical expertise specifically in this area, and that’s been a cost savings for the business as well as a growth opportunity for me personally.”

But the company has also realized cost savings from Jitterbit’s EDI pricing model.

“And as we grow, Jitterbit’s pricing structure ensures we aren’t paying more based on how successful we are. If we see a single relationship go from a hundred orders to a thousand orders, we know we won’t be paying anything additional in terms of usage fees.”

The Results: Empowering Growth

The product manager credits Jitterbit EDI and the Jitterbit Harmony platform with helping them grow from a direct-to-consumer-only brand to selling through retail partnerships around the globe. The rugs can now be found in the United States’ two largest home improvement stores, its biggest warehouse membership clubs, discount stores, trendy lifestyle retailers and more.

In just one year, the company’s wholesale business — a high-priority initiative that began with the initial Jitterbit deployment — has become a significant contributor to the company’s overall growth. “Our ability to integrate efficiently with major retailers is directly tied to the scalability and reliability of the Jitterbit platform,” the product manager said.

“Jitterbit EDI, in the Harmony platform, is a critical component for our business — giving us the speed, functionality and control we need to support our complex and growing trading partner relationships efficiently.”