"The chance of errors is now minimal"

About Boozyshop

Boozyshop imports well-known makeup brands and also sells makeup brushes under its own name. Boozyshop currently runs three online stores: boozyshop.nl, boozyshop.be, and boozyshop.com.

Maaike Ducarmon founded Boozyshop 10 years ago, and today the Boozyshop team consists of 20 people.

Growing together at full speed

Maaike Ducarmon was only seventeen when she started Boozyshop, an online makeup store, ten years ago. She was studying marketing and communication at a vocational school and had a blog about the latest beauty trends. On various online forums, she noticed how much effort people were putting into finding specific makeup brands. Maaike researched if she could source these products and started Boozyshop. It became such a success that she quickly couldn't handle it alone.

"She quickly gained a lot of fans on social media, which helped the Boozyshop name become well-known," says her partner, Koen Ducarmon. He helped her in the evenings while continuing to work as a store manager in a furniture shop. A year ago, Maaike asked him to join Boozyshop full-time. "At a trade fair in Bologna, we had the opportunity to launch several new makeup brands and expand our product range. We decided I would join the company full-time. We were ready to grow together and accelerate our efforts."

For Boozyshop, efficient inventory management is crucial. Since they started using Lightspeed and Picqer, this process has become much faster and more efficient.

Living and working together

Koen and Maaike now employ twenty people and have five open vacancies. They are barely keeping up with the workload, but living and working together is going great. "We've talked about it a lot and separated our tasks, we each focus on what we're good at. At work, it's too busy to focus on each other, and at home, we don't talk about the business anymore. It has been working well so far." Koen believes Boozyshop's strength lies in staying ahead. "We keep an eye on what bloggers and vloggers in the beauty community are spotting. The American brands we sell won’t be available elsewhere for another two years." Koen doesn't reveal the exact size of Boozyshop. "We prefer to keep the competition in the dark. We're often copied now, which we actually see as a compliment."

Boozyshop not only sells other cosmetic brands but also its own brand of brushes and other makeup accessories. "We felt there was no affordable, high-quality brand, so we decided to develop it ourselves. That’s the fun part of entrepreneurship—coming up with new ideas."

Keeping inventory automatically

In the summer of 2015, Boozyshop switched to the Lightspeed e-commerce platform (formerly SEO Shop). "Lightspeed is well-organized, and you can easily connect with other companies and integrate their apps through their app store." They had just purchased it when Koen saw the name Casper Bakker from Picqer on a trade fair participant list. "I was curious about how Picqer worked. We were looking for an additional way to automatically track our inventory. Logistics were really our bottleneck." After checking Picqer's website, Koen immediately got started. "I quickly realized that Picqer would save us a lot of time and money. The faster an order is picked and packed, the lower the cost per order." After purchasing, Boozyshop fully switched to Picqer. In an exception, the Picqer team didn’t visit on the day the system went live but came later. "They observed, identified areas where things weren't going well, and helped us improve. I really appreciate that level of service."

Ideal picking routes

The system has been running for a while now, to the satisfaction of Koen, Maaike, and their team. "Picqer works great, it's affordable, efficient, and really saves us a lot of time." Before they used Picqer, employees had to print orders individually and pick them manually. Now everything is automated: an employee enters batches of eight orders at once, the system combines pick lists and generates packing slips. A cart goes around to all the locations and automatically selects the most efficient route. "In one round, everything is done. The chance of errors is minimal. It's much clearer for the employees what actions they need to take. Without Picqer, we'd definitely need to hire 6 or 7 extra people."

Finally, Koen is very impressed with Picqer's purchasing module. "Before, we had to print all the inventory lists ourselves. Now the system tracks when a product reaches a critical minimum stock level. It automatically generates and sends an order to the manufacturers. We know our stock level at any time of the day. It saves us a lot of time and calculation work, which is important in a small team."

1 tool for all stores

Currently, Boozyshop operates three online stores on Lightspeed combined with Picqer: a Dutch, Belgian, and .com version. "We’ve connected all three stores to one Picqer account, so in the warehouse, we only work with one tool to process all the orders." In the coming years, Boozyshop plans to expand internationally, but for now, they are focused on serving their existing customers. By the end of 2016, they will move to a new distribution center that is 7.5 times larger than their current one. "We've completely outgrown our current space, and we have to keep making smart adjustments to increase turnover speed." Koen sees Boozyshop's growth as a compliment from their customers. "We don’t force it. That’s the beauty of entrepreneurship—you’re judged on your performance."