Community-Driven Ecommerce Site Threadless.com Solves Reporting And Data Analysis Challenges with RJMetrics
Threadless.com is a high-growth ecommerce company whose products are designed by its online community of over one million artists and design enthusiasts. Threadless sells tens of millions of dollars worth of community-designed apparel each year and was recently described in an Inc magazine cover story as “The Most Innovative Small Company In America.”
Business Problem
Threadless was growing fast, and the company’s already busy tech team was facing a growing stream of complex internal data requests. “Our company has been growing faster than our tech team,” said Threadless Solutions Architect Atkins Meyer.
Knowing that strong data visibility could lead to better marketing and merchandising decisions, Threadless decided to seek out a scalable solution to their reporting and analysis needs. “Most of our backend software was built to take sales and fulfill orders, and it's all custom,” said Meyer “We were searching for a business intelligence solution that fit what we had already built and didn't require a ton of implementation time.”
Solution: RJMetrics
Threadless decided to use RJMetrics as a centralized reporting and analysis solution. The company’s first requirement, a fast and easy implementation, was quickly delivered by RJMetrics. “Implementation was great,” said Meyer “A few short calls were all that was required, and RJMetrics delivered our initial set of reporting functionality in a few weeks. The launch was very successful and now every department is hungry for more metrics.”
RJMetrics combines data from Threadless’s databases, Google Analytics accounts, and Twitter accounts to provide a coherent view of the business from the top-down and the ability to drill down to detailed metrics.
Along with analyzing core ecommerce metrics like customer lifetime value and cohort analysis, Threadless has been able to leverage RJMetrics to monitor metrics specific to their unique business model. This includes studying the relationships between purchasing behavior and community activity such as voting, designing, and commenting.
Inventory-related metrics have also proven especially important. RJMetrics provided Threadless with access to new insights by studying changes to their inventory database over time. “The metrics around our inventory data are extremely valuable. Now we can optimize our supply chain and eliminate some of the inventory sore spots, which cost us money,” said Meyer.
Ongoing Value and Support
With over 25 users, Threadless has leveraged RJMetrics to add efficiencies in multiple departments across multiple data sets. RJMetrics enables better management through metrics, better merchandising through deeper customer insights, and greater efficiency that has taken the strain off of a busy technical team.
Meyer describes RJMetrics customer support as “Excellent” and “Incredibly helpful”. When asked if he would recommend RJMetrics, Meyer responded, “These guys are awesome!”
If you are interested in learning more about RJMetrics you can learn How it Works, read the latest post at our blog, The Metric System, or sign up for a demo below.
