The little crop that could
Jojoba, pronounced ‘ho-ho-ba,’ is a small shrub with an acorn-shaped fruit rich in oil, and despite being a native plant of North America, most of the jojoba in Australia (and all the Wadi-Wadi jojoba in the world!) comes from one farm in New South Wales.
It all started when Vicki Engsall’s father attended a farmer’s expo to buy a tractor. He also walked away with a new, hardy crop that he planned on trying to grow in a spare plot. Eight years later, the move paid off.
"Today we no longer have rice, barley, wheat or anything else on our farm except for jojoba ” says Vicki, co-founder of The Jojoba Company.
Away from the farm, co-founder Vicki already knew jojoba to be a liquid gold product in the world of natural skincare, but she had no idea that her father was growing her favourite salve. When she found out that he’d successfully grown a crop of jojoba, she said, “I know exactly what to do with this.”
It was the start of an incredible journey and MYOB has been there right from the beginning. “My ambition changed from simply educating people about the goodness of jojoba, to building a business.”
Providing real-time growth visibility
Over the last 13 years, The Jojoba Company has continued to grow, pivoting from bricks and mortar retail to eCommerce and now towards pursuing a global strategy.
As The Jojoba Company’s mission expanded, it could rely on MYOB Advanced Business to help it achieve its ambitions. From payroll to inventory, warehouse to sales, the system has become an integral part of its everyday operations. “We brought MYOB in for a lot of reasons,” Vicki says. “It actually was the centre of everything.”
Financial management is a key aspect of Tony Huang’s role as Assistant Accountant, and he finds that MYOB Advanced Business helps to export and distil large amounts of information into easy-to-read reporting.
"From month to month, year on year, we can compare how our channels and new product launches are performing in terms of dollar value and quantities, and how that aligns to our budget."
- Tony Huang Assistant Accountant | The Jojoba Company
He appreciates the ERP system is cloud-based, which allows him more flexibility while giving others real-time visibility. A lot of the company’s daily reporting is now automated too, which has helped ease Tony’s workload.
“I can access MYOB Advanced anywhere I go as long as I have a web browser, and that's very convenient for me to manage my tasks day to day,” he says.
Accurate inventory management for omni-channel business
The shift to eCommerce and global distribution also changed the physical needs of the business. Soon enough, the company needed new premises, expanding to include a large warehouse that required strong inventory management, as well as meeting rooms and offices that could house its thirty-plus staff.
Warehouse manager Tim Rolph has 30+ years’ experience in warehousing and says MYOB Advanced Business has been a valuable partner in navigating the unique needs of a fast-growing business – most notably, saving time during order fulfilment.
“Everything in the warehouse is all to do with time,” he says.
MYOB Advanced Business helps to store and remember kit specifications, which makes finding products and their location super easy.
"Using MYOB Advanced, we save at least two to three hours a week. It makes my life easier because you can look up the product by either part of the name or by half the SKU number, instead of scrolling through all the products."
- Tim Rolph Warehouse Manager | The Jojoba Company
MYOB Advanced Business also helps Tim stay on top of inventory management using integrated bundling in the system. “We can build product bundles into kit specifications, so when we put them in the system it's easy, we don't have to remember what's in that bundle because it already comes up.”
He finds the integration with Shopify excels at streamlining online ordering when compared to other systems the warehouse has previously used for fulfilment.
“I believe with the old system, they used to run out of stock, and this caused problems. Now there's no problem.”
From a financial perspective, Tony agrees.
“We have several platforms linked through Shopify for international online orders and they’re all integrated with MYOB Advanced Business. All the payments come through Shopify and all we do is reconcile those payments in MYOB. All the transactions flow seamlessly.”
- Tony Huang Assistant Accountant | The Jojoba Company
Sales reporting informs marketing spend
Assistant Sales Manager Keira Brown has also found that MYOB Advanced Business integrates well with ISVs such as Pepperi. She works in close collaboration with the warehouse and now has real-time visibility over sales being made on the road.
“Our sales team puts an order through on Pepperi which populates all the information. That goes directly to MYOB Advanced Business, which I then push through to the warehouse for fulfilment. There’s little to no downtime between placing and sending an order and there are no double-ups. It all works perfectly.”
With real-time visibility over sales reporting, Keira says the marketing and sales team knows where to focus attention – retailers that need additional support, product lines that need a marketing push or how certain promotions have performed. It all helps ensure the company spends its budget wisely and gets maximum ROI.
"MYOB Advanced helps us reach our targets by ensuring that our reporting is correct, we're marketing the right products to the right people and we’re not spending money on things that we don't need to spend money on."
- Keira Brown, Assistant Sales Manager, The Jojoba Company
From grassroots to global domination
MYOB Advanced Business gave The Jojoba Company the ability to grow and realise its ambition through innovative features such as real-time visibility and inventory management – all tailored to the business and supported by business partners Kilimanjaro Consulting.
The time saved could be funnelled back into the business, giving it more opportunity to tell the world about the incredible properties of jojoba.
“We've come a long way from people not even knowing how to say it, or what it was,” Vicki says.
“We’ve just launched in Vietnam and Korea. We’re already in the UK, the US and New Zealand, and we want to expand even further. MYOB Advanced Business’ reporting capabilities have been important for us to be able to monitor markets with the push of a button.”
"MYOB Advanced Business has helped us to grow. We’re able to move much quicker and more efficiently across all parts of the business. The system has also grown with us; we’ve been able to adapt or add more functionality as we’ve needed it."
- Vicki Engsall, Co-founder, The Jojoba Company
