Hancock's of Paducah: Threading ERP & Ecommerce Together

How Hancock’s unified NetSuite and BigCommerce to support fractional inventory, advanced fulfillment, and seamless bi-directional data flows.

The Company

Hancock's of Paducah

In 1969, Rowland Hancock founded Hancock Fabrics in Paducah, KY. Rowland was following in the footsteps of his parents, Dorothy and William Hancock, who founded a fabric business in Mississippi that had operated successfully for decades.

By 1986, Hancock’s had doubled the size of their physical location, creating the world’s largest selection of retail fabrics. By 1990, the business had expanded through a successful mail-order sales channel, building a nationwide clientele.

Since, the business has yet again doubled its footprint, now selling to over 72 countries worldwide through a thriving ecommerce storefront.

Industry

Retail, Fabric Manufacturing

Headquarters

Paducah, KY

Integrations

NetSuite, BigCommerce

MiSP

Anchor Group

The Background

While selling fabric may not seem like a new venture, it can lead to a variety of technical challenges. For instance, fabric can be inventoried and purchased in decimals/fractions of a measurement.

Hancock’s had tried using traditional Ecommerce + NetSuite ERP connectors. They had evaluated several options before being introduced to iPaaS.com. None provided the flexibility that their business required, and writing, managing, and maintaining a custom-built middleware would come with a lot of technical debt and high total cost of ownership.

The Challenge

Hancock’s wanted a system that they could rely on to flow order, customer, and product data between their ERP and Ecommerce systems. Whether supporting decimals in product quantities and inventory, or supporting advanced partial shipment workflows, they needed a solution that would meet their immediate needs, and leave them room to grow and evolve their tech stack.

The Solution

iPaaS.com was introduced by the team at Anchor Group, the NetSuite and BigCommerce partner supporting Hancock’s of Paducah. Utilizing the iPaaS.com platform, the limitations of traditional connectors and legacy integration platforms were a thing of the past.

Hancock’s would flow products from NetSuite to iPaaS.com. Orders and Customers would flow to NetSuite for fulfillment and accounting. Shipping, tracking, and order status updates would flow back to BigCommerce throughout the fulfillment process.

The Outcome

By utilizing iPaaS.com flexible integrations to BigCommerce and NetSuite, Hancock’s has been able to achieve the bi-directional workflows that previous connectors failed to provide. Products and inventory are flowing from the ERP to the eCommerce store. Transactions are moving from the online store back to the ERP for fulfillment. Additionally flows are being added, such as to flow gift card data between the systems. iPaaS.com’s autoscaling MACH architecture is providing a streamlined process supporting Hancock’s dataflows effectively during sale and promotional events.

All the while, specific requirements, such as for partial shipment/fulfillment are being met, ensuring a better customer experience (no guessing if/when an order shipped), and smoother operations.

The team at Anchor Group was able to support the full scoping and implementation of this project independently. While the support and partnership teams at iPaaS.com checked in regularly, the Anchor Group team went above and beyond to handle all aspects of the project directly with the Hancock’s of Paducah team. Anchor Group needed an integration to solve the clients' needs, but had all of the expert resources to deliver results. Projects like this have led Anchor Group to launch BigCommerce + NetSuite Accelerator program - highlighting their capabilities to shine in projects involving this mix of Ecommerce and ERP systems.

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