How e-food start-up 3Bears dispatched 15,000 orders in a single day with Xentral ERP

Initial situation before the show

Up until its TV appearance, 3Bears sold three types of products via its own online shop. The founders opted for Shopify, which also allowed them to cover all the processes – from incoming orders and warehouse inventory analyses to key back office functions. As Tim and Caroline knew that the TV show would be aired a few months later – which could potentially increase orders and, in turn, administrative work – they decided to go with Xentral ERP. This is because the core functions were already covered in the Xentral Home version – any other modules and interfaces that might be needed in the future can be added with just a few clicks.

Requirements and challenges

It was important for 3Bears to be able to map the fulfillment and production of the various porridge types in the system and to automate them as far as possible. One particular challenge was coping with the expected number of orders after the company was featured on an episode of Höhle der Löwen, the German version of Shark Tank/Dragons’ Den. The broadcast led to 47,000 individual orders, almost 15,000 of which were placed within the first twelve hours! Having anticipated this early on, Xentral developed the interface for the connection and real-time synchronization with Shopify. As thousands of orders were already received in the first hour during the broadcast, it was clear that the interface would need to be further optimized to enable it to cope with this kind of volume in the long term. The new Shopify interface allows virtually unlimited scaling with maximum performance.

On the fulfillment front, 3Bears also joined forces with service provider Andreas Schmid, one of the leading fulfillment providers in Germany. This also called for an individual solution that the Xentral team then developed for 3Bears. Xentral’s programming and implementation work was completed within the space of 8 weeks.

Fully automated warehouse management

3Bears uses the Enterprise version of Xentral and, through the individual programming, was able to fully automate the entire order, warehouse and logistics processes. The orders are registered directly in Xentral, the payment processes are initiated in the background and the ordered goods are sent to the fulfiller from the production facilities. The fulfiller then gives feedback to Xentral and the ERP system sends the data to the shop. It was also possible to automate the retailer order and delivery processes almost entirely.

Today, Caroline and Tim have expanded their range significantly. As well as five fruity porridge types, they sell chocolately variants with cocoa together with recipe books and other accessories. Why not pay a visit to their website?

If you want to check out the range of functions offered by Xentral yourself, all you have to do is set up a free demo account.