In this article, you will discover Embargosalobestia‘s journey, with a special focus on the company’s digital development. We will also reveal the recent record-breaking results attained by this furniture retailer, as well as some of its future challenges.
From a closeout store to an online furniture retailer
Ignacio Martínez started Embargosalobestia in Alhama de Murcia by selling a batch of household products from a company that was discontinuing its operation. Embargosalobestia has been purchasing closeout products since 2014 and —today— it is a leading furniture retailer with an annual turnover of 40 million and 25 brick-and-mortar stores throughout Spain.
The company was named Embargosalobestia in connection to its very own origins. Due to its astonishing success in this very price-competitive niche market, the retailer quickly managed to expand its catalog by adding more products from major brands and, consequently, became a benchmark for bargain furniture in Spain.
The company’s offerings evolved throughout all these years, and its current catalog includes new and guaranteed products. This proves that the company’s name turned out to be a marketing hook. It entices buyers who are looking for furniture or other home items at the lowest price to an attractive assortment of products directly from major manufacturers.
After operating an online sales channel for a while, in 2019, the company decided to bet strategically on the ecommerce by creating an attractive and updated website. Unbeknownst to it, investing in ecommerce just before the pandemic was a stake that turned out to be a shrewd one. The digital channel became incredibly relevant as it grew up to 500%. Today, it stands for 20% of the company’s turnover.
The stake on the digital channel
Embargosalobestia opened its first online store in 2016. Since then, it has used several CMS: WordPress, PrestaShop and, ultimately, Atnova, a developed proprietary CMS. In 2022, the company’s needs also grew significantly, and it started pondering the possibility of acquiring a robust ecommerce platform that would mitigate its limitations. After discovering VTEX, Embargosalobestia became especially interested in the following capabilities:
- OMS and logistics — The new solution had to be customized to the company’s specific needs, both in terms of large products and in-country distribution. It was imperative that the proposed solution could manage multiple warehouses, numerous carriers, and in-store pickup.
- Scalability — The solution had to be easily adaptable to a high level of growth, both in terms of products and web traffic.
- Marketplace — The company’s plans included the future addition of multiple sellers to the online store.
- Updates — The company wanted a SaaS system that would not require regular updates but were permanently enhanced with the latest developments in the technology market.
- App Store — A place where anyone could find the latest integrations, apps, and developments that would make the ecommerce scalable and keep it always up-to-date.
Generally speaking, Embargosalobestia wanted to bet on an omnichannel solution. Its strategy was to provide its customers with new and better purchase options, such as connecting the inventory kept either in its central warehouse or in the warehouses of its 25 stores to the ecommerce channel. This allows the customer to receive his online order from the closest warehouse and turns the items kept in the in-store POS into more profitable items.
The new online store
“The new website has largely promoted the omnichannel strategy. Our intention is that the buyer always remembers we own 25 stores, that he can see each product stock at the store closest to his location, and that we managed to improve greatly the click and collect system with the newly incorporated ecommerce solution.”
Andrés Otón Urbano, director of Digital Transformation at Embargosalobestia
One of the main challenges for the development of Embargosalobestia’s new online store was to improve conversion ratios and, consequently, to make the user experience seamless and rewarding. A second, but not less important goal was to draw more visitors to the brick-and-mortar stores. Lastly, the company’s overall purpose was to professionalize the frontend of its digital commerce. VTEX provided the tools and confidence to achieve all these three challenges.
“We were running our operation on a proprietary platform that was quite limited. VTEX helped us redesign our UX/UI environment and focused it on the customer experience. Consequently, our user interface resulted in a cleaner and much more segmented approach. With our new website, we can now monitor our customers’ interactions and —based on their interests and data analysis— modify the website for continuous improvement. Additionally, adaptation to mobile devices has been a real success and our checkout is much more agile.”
Eloy Garcia, Marketing director at Embargosalobestia
Before launching our new ecommerce, the last step of the online customer journey at Embargosalobestia’s store was one of the vanishing points where the company lost buyers. Now, thanks to VTEX Smart Checkout, which memorizes customers’ data to avoid retyping it, conversion rates have more than doubled in comparison to the previous scenario.
“From the in-company perspective, we are now more flexible and independent of the technical team as we can set a wide variety of promotions ourselves, manage the products we want to boost based on the customer’s procurement channel and even recommend those products in the search engine. We believe that these and other capabilities such as the creation of landings will enable our sales team to satisfy our customers’ requirements at a faster pace and respond to future changes in relation either to the market or the demand.”
Eloy Garcia, Marketing director at Embargosalobestia
Vision for the future
Embargosalobestia aims at owning up to 50 brick-and-mortar stores in Spain by 2025 by following its “oil stain” strategy. This is how the company prefers calling its expansion model in the Iberian Peninsula where there is an increasingly higher number of in-store POS.
From the technological perspective, the digital transformation involves converting the online store into a marketplace and allowing other stores to sell their products on the platform by themselves. This would permit them to expand their scope of products and services for the buyer.
“We are proud to see that the team of Embargosalobestia uses VTEX platform to achieve results beyond their expectations. They have a strong vision of the omnichannel experience as a differentiating factor. In addition, they are successfully digitalizing a traditional business model with the support of a highly qualified team. With VTEX, they have been able to optimize their checkout process, improve order delivery with the click and collect service and implement Live Shopping to further complete the customer experience. A tool may be good, but eventually, it is only as good as its user, and it is exciting to see a customer take full advantage of the capabilities of our software.”
Allan Chung, Head of Sales & Marketing at VTEX Spain
All information was provided and approved by Embargosalobestia.
