To make the world love liquorice – is a mission that’s beautiful in its simplicity. This is the bold ambition of LAKRIDS BY BÜLOW and, given the incredible journey the brand has been on so far, you wouldn’t put it past them to accomplish this mission.
It started back in 2007, when LAKRIDS BY BÜLOW founder, Johan Bülow, decided to cook up a storm. Inspired by entrepreneurs in his family, Johan saw there was a gap in the market and decided to create a gourmet liquorice product.
He threw open the doors and windows and began cooking liquorice. Before long word (and the delicious smell!) spread and, before Johan knew it, all the liquorice was sold out in just a couple of hours.
This was just the start. A year later LAKRIDS BY BÜLOW opened its first factory and the success story truly began to pick up pace. Since then, the business has seen phenomenal global success, selling through more than 2,000 outlets in 35 countries as well as operating 28 brand stores across the globe.
This success and growth meant LAKRIDS BY BÜLOW had to find technology partners to match their own ambition – including someone to provide an API-first, cloud-native Unified Commerce Platform and POS.
Software and technology play a huge role in our mission. If we want to change something we can. We are in control, we’re not slaves to some proprietary platform.
LAKRIDS BY BÜLOW had already bought into the best-of-breed approach to software before the pandemic hit. Since then the brand has doubled down on this approach – as Chief Digital Officer Michael Ewald Hansen explains.
“We bought into the MACH concept and made the decision through the pandemic to move from an on premise, monolithic platform into a more API-driven approach,” he says.”
“This shift in mindset led us to Sitoo when we were looking for a POS to power our stores. Sitoo is relatively decoupled, is easy to integrate, and packed with capabilities we saw as being incredibly beneficial for us as we continue to grow and scale. The APIs Sitoo has are incredibly easy to use and the documentation is very good which meant the implementation and roll-out went super smoothly.
“Software and technology play a huge role in our mission. If we want to change something we can. We are in control, we’re not slaves to some proprietary platform that decides, for example, how we manage an order or how to let customer data flow. We can decide on our own because, no matter what we want to achieve, there’s an API for it.”
Loyalty by design
LAKRIDS BY BÜLOW are a brand that doesn’t just play lip service to customer satisfaction and CX. They put their customers first in everything they do. From getting feedback on new flavors to offering factory tours, they constantly pioneer new ways of involving their customer base in the brand’s story.
Much of this centers around Lakrids Lovers – the loyalty initiative and community of ‘super fans.’
This innovative initiative is much easier to implement, execute, and gets much better results when all of LAKRIDS BY BÜLOW’s data is synced in real-time and when all their systems are seamlessly integrated.
Michael Ewald Hansen explains: “We’re trying to emulate the experience you have when you visit your local store or your local grocer – where you feel welcome and engaged when you enter the store, where they know a little bit about you and sometimes they’ll give you something extra or a treat to try. We’re not there yet but we’ve made a great start. For example, Lakrids Lovers get treats and free non-purchasable samples when they visit a store.
“It works because our different systems are able to talk to each other. When a customer signs up to our newsletter they receive a QR code in their welcome email. Now this code can be scanned in-store and, through Sitoo POS, the customer data can be picked up by talking to our ecommerce platform.
“This also then triggers an event which is pushed back into our data warehouse so we know what each Lakrids Lover has purchased in store so we can start building a 360 degree view of our customers”
“This is just the start of what we want to do. We have way more advanced features we want to build into this so we can offer truly personalized experiences to every single one of our customers and help the world fall in love with liquorice.”
LAKRIDS BY BÜLOW also found that most Lakrids Lovers are omnichannel customers who have a higher average order value, a longer lifetime and who buy more frequently. It’s an initiative that delivers the goods time and time again, helping LAKRIDS BY BÜLOW get closer to achieving their mission one piece of liquorice at a time.
Stand-out stores
Physical retail is a huge part of the business and is leveled-up thanks to smart tech. If you walk into any LAKRIDS BY BÜLOW store, you’ll immediately get the sense of something special. Not only do they look fantastic, they play a vitally important role in powering LAKRIDS BY BÜLOW’s growth journey.
Michael Ewald Hansen continues:
Sitoo plays a really important role in our stores. It’s incredibly easy for our store associates to quickly show products, to display the right prices and to handle inventory. We also plan on using Sitoo to enhance our fulfillment capabilities in the future.
“Our physical stores are such an important part of our story. They are places where our customers can come in and sample our products and truly experience what we offer. It also means our staff can tell the wonderful story behind our brand, the different flavors we use and things like our seasonal offerings."
“But, what’s really interesting, is when we run digital ads in areas close to our stores or even our wholesalers, we see a much greater return on this ad spend and more footfall in our stores as a result. We see this halo effect as being instrumental in our continued growth.”
If you want to find out more about all the capabilities, features and functionality packed into Sitoo we’d love to show you. Book a 30 minute call with one of our advisors and discover how you can make every shopping experience a positive one.
