Case Study: $3,000,000 in 18 months with no-code

Thinking from a client’s perspective: the story of Eric Sablan, who wanted to ensure that his customers have the most convenient experience possible and created always up-to-date catalogs with SpreadSimple. And got the results that exceeded all the expectations.

Introduction

Meet Eric Sablan, a marketeer and founder of Burnt Phone Marketing, host and founder of Burnt Phone Marketing Podcast/ Burnt Phone Marketing Radio, COO, and a partner in Clever Money Makers, and ManyChat Messenger Marketing Expert. Being born and raised in Alaska, Eric says that he has been an entrepreneur since he was a child.

At the moment, Eric also works as a Senior Account manager at Pacific Alaska Wholesale, the wholesale arm of NWC International, the oldest retailer in North America. For over 30 years, Pacific Alaska Wholesale specializes in shipping groceries and general merchandise throughout rural Alaska.

The company had a website built on WordPress and Wix, but there were certain drawbacks.

“One of the biggest issues we had with our clients was to have them check out without processing credit cards,” says Eric. The company tried different methods, for example, click funnels, but in order to process the orders their clients still had to attach their credit cards, so none of the solutions worked for the case.

Another problem was that there was no way for Eric to update the items without hassle. He started looking for a solution that would make keeping the inventory up-to-date as easy as editing the spreadsheet. Eric shared his vision of Google Sheets working as a website content management system with some of his friends, and a funny thing happened — just within a week, Eric found out about SpreadSimple.

I actually found SpreadSimple while sitting in my bed, talking to my buddy Christian Alva. He was like, “Bro, I think I have what you are looking for!”

Eric Sablan, Senior account manager at Pacific Alaska Wholesale

“I watched literally two minutes of the webinar and I was sold!” says Eric.

The learning curve and the setup

Eric was sure that he found exactly what he wanted, but after trying out SpreadSimple for the first time, he started to have some second thoughts. Eric remembers, “It wasn’t confusing, I just wasn’t learning that quickly.”

But after he spent some time creating the websites and learned more about how SpreadSimple works, he knew he made the right choice. “Once I figured it out, and basically created a template, it was game over. I literally made 12 different websites using SpreadSimple but using different types of Google Sheets, it was amazing.”

At first, Eric was planning to use SpreadSimple for smaller cases, but after testing it out, he decided to give it a try for Pacific Alaska Wholesale.

It did take some time and it did take some legwork, but after you figure out exactly what this software is capable of, the sky is the limit.

Eric Sablan, Senior account manager at Pacific Alaska Wholesale

The feature that Eric found especially helpful for the case was the ability to embed a website made with SpreadSimple as a widget onto the company’s existing website. This way, the company didn’t have to build everything from scratch and at the same time managed to keep the content protected from the competitors’ eyes.

This is the catalog page that customers see once logged in

Eric also set up an automated flow using the Zapier and the webhooks. So now when the order comes in, Zapier grabs the data and creates a new Sheet that has all the order information. Then the Sheet is sent to the company’s processing team who uploads it into their system and processes the order.

The launch

The updated website with widgets was launched in February 2021 during the company’s special Spring Shop Around event. That week, they processed orders for under $500,000, and eventually averaged 137 orders in the first quarter.

The president of our company literally said “We’re building a website and you’ve surpassed the dollars that they think they’re going to do in the first three years!”

Eric Sablan, Senior account manager at Pacific Alaska Wholesale

According to Eric, after their clients were introduced to the new ordering system, they appreciated the simplicity of using it, and, as the result, the number of orders made through the website started growing.

$3,000,000 in revenue

The company planned to get $1,000,000 in revenue in a year through a website, but their expectations were exceeded. In January 2022, the company processed over $1,500,000, and up to July 2022, the number is over $3,000,000.

In June 2022, the company received 34 orders for $475,205 in total, with an average order of $13,976. “If we average $400,000 a month, then we’ll easily do just under $5,000,000 in a year through SpreadSimple”, thinks Eric. He also confesses that the big numbers were not the primary goal.

When I saw the system and laid it out, I only looked at it through a client’s lens. I didn’t look at it through “how many orders I’m going to get”, but rather “how can I get this more simple for my client, from the client’s end?”

Eric Sablan, Senior account manager at Pacific Alaska Wholesale

More and more Eric’s customers are making orders online and their feedback is very positive. They find the ordering process quick and simple, and they especially appreciate the absence of paperwork they had to go through before.

All the customers need to do now is to add the items to the cart and then fill out the short form on site

Current workflow and plans

At the moment, there are seven different sub-tabs on the company website for different categories of items. And the whole item deck counts 22,000 items! Once a month, one of Eric’s colleagues pulls the updated inventory data from the database and puts it into one Google Sheets. Then Eric updates the Sheets on the websites. According to him, after having set everything up once, it doesn’t take much time to keep everything up-to-date.

So now he just keeps optimizing the website to ensure his customers have the best experience possible.

What I love about SpreadSimple is when you need to make an adjustment, it’s so simple. I log into the app, I log into Google, and can make changes. I literally can do it on the fly.

Eric Sablan, Senior account manager at Pacific Alaska Wholesale

When we were writing this story, Eric was preparing for the big live event that his company holds every August, The Fall Shop Around.

“It’s literally an ordering event and we will use SpreadSimple to process 90% of the ordering. My goal is to do $1,500,000 in seven days”

Eric Sablan, Senior account manager at Pacific Alaska Wholesale

90% of the orders that the company was going to take over this event would be made online. Some clients would still do paperwork, but most of the orders that would come through during that week would come over SpreadSimple, according to Eric’s plans.

P.S. Just before publishing this case study, we got an update from Eric: they processed orders for $1,400,000 in a week during their Fall Shop Around Event!

This story was originally published on Medium.