Ten Thousand Villages – A CSM Success Story
Ten Thousand Villages, the Oldest Fair Trade Organization in the U.S., Automates and Streamlines eCommerce Channels with Channel Sales Manager
Download the full document here: CSM – TTV – Client Success Story.
First published on: March 18, 2020 Updated on: January 3, 2023
Ten Thousand Villages is a nonprofit, fair-trade organization that markets handcrafted products from disadvantaged artisans in more than 35 countries. Founded in 1946, Ten Thousand Villages was the first fair trade organization in the U.S. and today is one of the world’s largest. It cultivates long-term buying relationships in which artisans receive a reasonable price and work in safe conditions. Ten Thousand Villages is a founding member of the World Fair Trade Organization (WFTO) and a certified member of the Fair Trade Federation (FTF). The organization is proud to be known worldwide as one of the most ethical organizations; many products are made from recycled materials.
The Challenge:
Ten Thousand Villages is primarily a distribution organization, selling directly as well as through various channels, including online, 17 company-owned stores, five seasonal “pop-up” stores, and 38 “board” stores (similar to franchise stores). Their products are also sold at hundreds of independent retailers. With strong consumer support for fair-trade commerce, the company is going strong: In 2018, the reported revenue was more than $15M.
However, the eCommerce arm of the business was not operating efficiently. With five different data sources, Ten Thousand Villages relied on a string of pieced-together scripts written in-house to get information back and forth between Magento and an outside application. This resulted in errors and delays in fulfilling customer orders.
The Solution:
ArcherPoint suggested they implement Channel Sales Manager (CSM). CSM enables companies to manage Magento or Amazon orders and keep their site up to date with the latest information from Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central. With complete integration, CSM enables automation of:
- order retrieval
- the ability to send order shipment and invoice information to Magento in real-time
- the ability to keep product inventory quantities up to date
- and more!
Most importantly, it enables them to get actionable insight into their eCommerce business that helps drive smarter decisions faster.
The Results:
With CSM, Ten Thousand Villages could remove the scripts altogether, centralizing data source communication and making Dynamics 365 BC the central point where all their data resides. CSM pushes and pulls product information and orders directly to their Magento platform. This includes images, marketing descriptions, and product attributes. While they are not currently using CSM to remove orders from Amazon, CSM is bringing in Amazon orders through its Magento connection.
Ten Thousand Villages also found CSM easily customizable by subscribing to CSM-published events, enabling them to integrate gift-wrapped operations and gift card processing.
Implementing CSM saves valuable time spent on data entry and endless hours wasted on troubleshooting. It was also straightforward to set up. The company’s internal web developer was responsible for developing Magento and had no trouble managing the CSM integration. They did it without assistance from the IT department. This has freed that group to work on other important initiatives.
“We had multiple, different, data sources … long story short, CSM saves us many headaches and it was easy to set up and manage … rollout was phenomenal!”
Ten Thousand Villages
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