Posted by Marissa Kinsley, Manufacturing and Distribution Industry Marketing Lead

Deepak was fresh out of college when he designed and produced 50 pairs of two-way tower speakers and set them out for sale in a small, warehouse-like retail shop that he’d opened in his hometown of Niagara Falls in Ontario, Canada.

Sharing the bare metal shelves with top brands like Sony and Pioneer, Deepak’s 40-inch tall speakers lacked aesthetic polish — but more than made up for it in audio performance. Word of mouth spread around town and Deepak’s speakers flew off the shelves.

“Within a week, we’d sold all 50 pairs,” said Deepak, a lifelong audiophile. “None of the branded products we carried ever sold over 50 pieces in a week. No one returned them, everyone loved them, so it was very successful and exciting.”

It was also the start of Fluance, which over 18 years has grown into a leading manufacturer and B2C ecommerce retailer of speakers, turntables and home theater systems that focus on high performance.

Flush with the success of his first speakers in 1999, Deepak designed and manufactured additional products. The small family-backed company pivoted from brick-and-mortar sales of third-party equipment in favor of the budding Fluance brand, opening a first-generation webstore on Yahoo.

Cranking Up the Business Volume

By 2008, sales and production outstripped the capabilities of QuickBooks and labor-intensive, paper-heavy manual processes with Microsoft Access and Excel. After sizing up Microsoft Dynamics GP and Sage, Fluance turned to NetSuite to crank up its business volume — and hasn’t looked back.

Since going live on NetSuite, Fluance has grown revenue 20x while handing 30x more transactions. Order management and fulfillment management that used to take 45 minutes is now done in two minutes, while the 100-person company has avoided the cost of five full-time order and fulfillment personnel.

“We never would have been able to grow to where we are today without an ERP like NetSuite,” said Deepak, Fluance’s founder. “Even if we grow another 20 times in the next 10 years, NetSuite will still be the right fit for Fluance.”

Fluance relies on NetSuite’s unified platform for financials, order and inventory management, CRM and customer support. The company utilizes NetSuite for transactions with contract manufacturers, and fulfillment by 3PL partners.

Powering Ecommerce and CRM

NetSuite also serves as the back end of Fluance’s mission-critical ecommerce sales at www.fluance.com, providing real-time inventory data, order processing and content management.

“NetSuite has been very important for our ecommerce channel,” Deepak said. “The ability to bring all orders from different sites into one place makes things very easy.”

Real-time data and analytics in NetSuite give Fluance visibility into key metrics and trends to adapt swiftly to changing conditions.

“NetSuite reporting has made decision-making a lot easier,” Deepak said. “All of our departments can pull metrics and data on inventory, profitability, customer experience and more. The data and business intelligence that comes out of NetSuite has been extremely valuable.”

CRM and case management within NetSuite are also vital to success, Deepak noted. With unified information on customers and orders, Fluance cultivates strong customer relationships and provides timely, knowledgeable response to issues.

And by tracking issues, Fluance has insights to help guide product development. This paid off with winning customer reviews at www.fluance.com, as well as by professional audio reviewers at such outlets as CNET, TechCrunch and Gizmodo.

“Our passion is to make high quality, high fidelity products,” Deepak said. “The ability to focus on brand growth, not IT infrastructure and maintenance, by having NetSuite in the cloud has really been great.”