Ideal of Sweden, the business comet that delivers mobile accessories using efficient eCommerce systems

Adam Gudmundsson is eCommerce manager and thereby responsible for eCommerce in fast growing Ideal of Sweden, based in Norrköping, about 150 kilometres to the south of Stockholm.

Ideal of Sweden develops, designs and markets accessories for mobile phones. It is mainly mobile phone cases but also bags and fashion accessories. Since 2016, when Adam joined ideal, the company has been on a real journey.

The company he joined had seven employees and a turnover of SEK 12 million (about €1.2 million). The Ideal of 2021 consists of 120 employees, sales closing on SEK 1 billion, exports worldwide and localized websites in 25 countries. Germany is now the largest market, but Sweden still accounts for 15-20% of sales.

eCommerce has become the dominant force

During Adam's time at Ideal, eCommerce has become the dominant channel with about 70% of the sales. Previously, sales through telecom operators were the dominant part. Direct contact with customers in stores is still an important part because there is often spontaneous feedback that way. The company also has its own stores in large malls and sometimes pop-up stores at airports in order to be visible, give customers the opportunity to look at the products and be inspired.

"The iPhone users are responsible for the majority of purchases; they account for about 90%. Then Samsung comes with about ten. Among the many channels Ideal uses to reach out, for example, Facebook is very important. But we are on almost all social media and very active on, for example, Instagram and Tiktok as well -- both with our own videos and with sponsored ads", comments Adam Gudmundsson.

Images: from Ideal of Sweden

When eCommerce meets efficient product information management

Ideal of Sweden has its own department within the company that produces the features for the various channels. It is when there are ready-made videos and advertisements that Channable enters the marketing work.

Channable is the tool that ensures that all formats and specifications required by the various channels, by Google and by various online stores work. Today, there are 26 websites, a dozen affiliate networks, a couple of marketplaces and all conceivable social media networks that handle ads. In total, there are hundreds of automatic campaigns, ad groups and ads.

Ideal's rapid growth would have been difficult to implement without solutions such as Channable. - Adam Gudmundsson, eCommerce Manager at Ideal of Sweden

But on the other hand, the tool also ensures that information and statistics are returned from the various platforms so that Ideal knows what works in different channels, during what time of year, when in the month, during the day and a number of other important, and sometimes crucial, variables that are needed. to be able to quickly fix and adjust.

All channels have their own requirements for the material they receive and when working with many marketing channels, it can be difficult to get all the parameters right.

"There has to be the right language in every market, sometimes the right images and the right video. The indictment must be direct and of interest to the recipients. If we make a mistake, we can receive warnings and risk being excluded from major players such as Google.

In addition, the different channels often change parameters. Then it is quite nice to just be able to run the material into Channable and be able to trust that what goes out is correct and that the information we get back is correct and can be used.

Thanks to this information exchange with channel, customer, and warehouse, we can also directly announce how many days it takes before the customer have received their product", Adam stated.

The work with the eCommerce site has great similarities with how a supermarket works. They try to get visitors to go a certain way through the store so that everything that can be of interest is also exposed to the customer. But of course, it should be possible to find shortcuts for those who are in a hurry and are only looking for a specific product.

Constant adjustments is key to success

To be able to handle up to 100,000 customer orders a day and in hectic periods such as Black Friday and Christmas shopping, perhaps up to a million, Ideal has built an engine that can handle all data streams with all possible information.

In order to optimize this process, it's necessary to constantly adjust. It can be to adjust the website when new products are to be released, to broaden the range without affecting established products. For some markets, the product range must also be adapted as not everything is possible to market everywhere.

Ideal's rapid growth would have been difficult to implement without solutions such as Channable. They have always been able to quickly adapt to the information they have received from various market channels.

"It is noticeable that Channable works very close to the market channels and constantly adapts and optimizes the solution. For us, it is also important that our employees who are working with Channable do not have to be particularly IT-savvy to use the solution. Now everyone can learn to use it fairly quickly, which reduces the dependence on key people", Adam concludes.