Case studies

The brand: CleanCo

CleanCo was started in 2019 by Made in Chelsea star Spencer Matthews and has rapidly grown to become the number 1 no and low alcohol spirit brand in grocery retail. They create authentic alternatives to spirits that people love with a fraction of the alcohol, allowing people to moderate their drinking without sacrificing their evening gin and tonic or rum and cola. Since launch, CleanCo have expanded their range beyond the original gin to flavoured gins, rum and pre-mixed cocktails too. They currently sell DTC and through retailers in the UK and Ireland but have ambitions to expand their international presence.

Tomais Mullaney, UK Market Strategy and Planning Manager, explains how elm is helping CleanCo go deeper on LTV and better understand where their growth is coming from.

The problem

Error-prone manual processes

“Before elm, I was exporting orders from Sainsburys and Shopify to Excel – it was really, really time consuming and often prone to error. It’s often quite easy to miss stuff or let a period go by without picking up on certain information. And as my role developed, I had less and less time to spend on it.”

Surface-level LTV

“We track LTV on a monthly basis – that means looking at how different cohorts are performing and how much value they bring into the company in subsequent months. But before elm, I could only look at LTV cohorted by First Order Month on Shopify – I couldn’t see it cohorted in any other way. And I couldn’t see it at all on Amazon.”

The solution

Automatic access to key metrics

“With elm, we’ve removed all the manual data entry and put everything in one place. elm shows me a breakdown of sales by SKU on a daily basis. Being able to have that visually available and updating automatically on a regular basis is absolutely huge for me. We also get really useful in-store metrics like in store availability and lost sales by product range.”

“With elm, we’ve removed all the manual data entry and put everything in one place.”

Instant promotional analysis

“We often run targeted promotions in up to 60 stores. With elm, I can see sales by store in different time periods really easily – so I can analyse the effectiveness of promotions really quickly, and on demand rather than having to transcribe all those figures by store from Sainsburys Horizon.

“It’s also helped us analyse the impact of aisle fin promotions – by taking into account store-specific sales trends, elm helps us isolate the impact of an aisle fin or a particular creative during promotions. It’s directly informing how we plan future promotions.”

Flagging problem stores

“The stock but no sales report that elm sends is crucial for us. We’ll identify the stores that have stock, but haven’t sold in, say, three weeks – perhaps the POS system is lagging behind, or perhaps they’re just not putting the stock on the shelf. The next step for us is ringing round those stores to figure out the problem and get it fixed.”

Mapping NOLO drinkers

“The NOLO (no or low alcohol) category is so new that no one fully understands how people consume these drinks, or where those people are. And one of the key things that elm’s LTV dashboard does is allow you to cohort by geographic region. And that’s been really, really key to call out for us.”

The results

– CleanCo are saving 3-4 days every month by automating extraction and consolidation with elm
–  elm is directly informing how CleanCo plans future promotions

A better understanding of growth

“During Dry January, we’ve seen record days on our DTC platform – but the great thing about elm is that you can immediately break down successes like these: which product was it? What sort of customer was it? Where were they?”

“The great thing about elm is that you can immediately break down successes.”

“With elm’s LTV feature, we also measured the impact of a recent web redesign. We found that the December 2020 cohort – the first to use the restructured site – had the highest average order value to date.”

Time saved

“We’re saving 3-4 days every month with elm. But what’s telling is that right now, we only have two SKUs in one retailer, and I’m already finding the time-saving to be really helpful. But as we grow our listings, either in the same retailer or in others, those time savings are effectively even larger.”

Easier internal reporting

“elm sends us three weekly reports: swing stores, stocked but not selling stores, and a top line performance update. Those packaged takeaways are really useful for internal comms – every week, we do a Five Bullet Friday at CleanCo and I will often use the information in our elm reports for my top line internal reporting.”

 

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