Here We Flo.
HighCohesion was there when Here We Flo needed to level up its automation and expand its horizons to the US.
The brand.
Here We Flo is a testament to the importance of good friends and great conversation.
University buddies Tara Chandra and Susan Allen were chatting in the loos between classes about wanting to start a business, despite neither coming from an entrepreneurial background.
Tara was a musician in her spare time while Susan worked for a non-profit organisation, but they both knew they’d love to create a social-impact business that would help the people and world around them.
Susan wanted to start the Feminist Mafia, and Tara suggested tampons were a good place to start - high-quality, planet-friendly tampons that weren’t made from synthetic fibres were impossible to find.
And just like that, Here We Flo was born.
From there the pair spent a year learning everything about their business, from how to design its look and feel to how its products would be manufactured, before trying to convince retail stores to stock them.
Following lots of hard work and a healthy Kickstarter funding round, the ball was rolling. Shortly afterwards they officially launched their products in Planet Organic and Boots on the high street.
Today the Here We Flo range includes organic, sustainable period and bladder care products, as well as a range of condoms.
But despite this growth, Tara and Susan are determined that 5% of their profits will continue to go to charity, just as it always has.
The snag.
Of course, like any rapidly expanding brand, it wasn’t all plain sailing for Here We Flo.
Having successfully navigated a launch and growth in the UK, HWF needed to iron out its back-end inconsistencies to keep moving with purpose in the right direction.
Furthermore, with one eye on the US, the business was also looking to trade in unfamiliar territory and needed a reliable partner to get it there. Enter HighCohesion.
Behind the scenes, we found Here We Flo’s systems required too much manual importing and exporting of data from system to system.
In turn, this meant its small team was spending too much time on manual data work rather than on the growth of the business, so things needed to change.
HWF was also having issues with its existing automation between systems, which was leading to unreliable data denying staff the clarity they needed to make crucial decisions.
But perhaps the biggest hurdle for HWF was its intentions to begin stocking in and despatching goods from a warehouse in the US.
It needed an integration partner to build new custom automation between their OMS Unleashed and the WMS’s 3PL to ensure plain sailing.
100s
Hours of manual work saved per year
5
Business critical systems fully automated
100%
Satisfied (from NPS)
“HighCohesion’s Tom and Sophie are smashing it. Tom has been reliable since day one and has been such an asset to have on our team. Sophie has hit the ground running and has been all over our recent go-live. It has run so smoothly because of it.”
Lauren Alicardi - Supply Chain Manager, Here We Flo
The HighCohesion solution.
HighCo was able to find quick solutions to complex problems, even when working with difficult or new systems.
We split the requirements into phases to deliver value quickly where needed, starting with that tricky second album across The Pond.
HighCo delivered fully-fledged automation with HWF’s American 3PL in just two months from project sign-off to go-live.
That allowed Here We Flo to start shipping to their US customers and improve their B2B customer experience with big, frequent purchasers.
Next, we replaced an existing integration between HWF’s OMS Unleashed and their UK warehouse with a much more powerful integration solution.
The integration allowed sales order edits to pass to the WMS when made in the OMS and orders to be locked in the OMS when no longer editable in the WMS.
The result? Much more reliable sales order fulfilment and greater accuracy from their inventory management.
Then it was on to rescuing a previous project run by another provider which was abandoned after more than a year of work with nothing to show for it.
We focused on delivering a robust integration between HWF’s B2B sales portal and their OMS, which required custom, tailored middleware logic to account for multiple data discrepancies.
The feedback.
Across our two phases of work with Here We Flow (so far!), HighCohesion has consistently proven its worth as a partner that leaves no stone unturned.
We helped launch a US warehouse in a fast-moving project, despite needing to integrate with an out-of-date WMS which the 3PL had little technical staff support for, plus a brand new system in Unleashed.
Furthermore, we delivered our integration between HWF’s B2B sales portal and their OMS in just a few months, despite another provider tapping out.
Lauren Alicardi, Supply Chain Manager at Here We Flo said:
“I wanted to drop a note to say that Tom and Sophie are smashing it.
“Tom has been reliable since day one and has been such an asset to have on our team.
“Sophie has hit the ground running and is doing such a good job.
“She has been all over our recent go-live and it has run so smoothly because of it.”
Check out the brand at www.hereweflo.co.
Tech stack integrated through HighCohesion
Ecommerce Platform
OMS
3PL
3PL
Wholesale