Since 1996, family-owned-and-operated Boca Terry has been creating custom products that make people feel good. They have grown a successful business by providing five-star hotels, cruise lines, spas, medical facilities, and promotional product companies around the world with luxurious bathrobes, towels, and slippers along with elegant lounge chair covers and a wide variety of spa accessories.

Its customizable products are meticulously made from quality terry and microfiber fabrics via its stringent manufacturing processes and sent out through its own distribution centers – all supported by a team that believes in offering competitive pricing with outstanding customer service.

But the high standard of manufacturing and service Boca Terry demanded of itself was not being met by the technology upon which it had relied on.

That’s why founders—and brothers—Edward and Bruce Cohen decided a modern business solution was in order. They initially went with Oracle NetSuite, but that system simply didn’t work for them. So, they turned to Acumatica with some amazing results.

How It All Began

According to Edward, who holds the titles of owner, CEO, and head of financial operations, Boca Terry came about through his own experience working with his father in the business of manufacturing women’s sportswear for major department stores. He says in a Boca Terry blog that he eventually decided he wanted to do something different and contacted his brother with the idea of starting or buying their own business.

“I told him I had certain criteria in mind. The business had to be related to clothing manufacturing, it had to have a large customer platform, and we would need to create our own brand.”

Bruce was on board, and he was the one who found their first option—a bathrobe manufacturer in San Francisco, who sold its products to hotels. They offered to buy the business, but when the owner refused, they decided to start their own luxury bathrobe business, naming it Boca Terry after the town Edward was living in (Boca Raton, Florida) and after the fabric they used in their products (terry).

The now very successful company derives 98% of its sales through business-to-business (B2B) operations with 2% from business-to-consumer (B2C) activities. Between their global manufacturing, wholesale distribution, and ecommerce activities (which includes its own ecommerce store on BigCommerce and an outsourcing partner selling products on Amazon), the Cohen brothers’ business is now thriving, but prior to landing on Acumatica as their business management solution, it was inefficient.

How It Almost Went

During its early years, Boca Terry utilized three disparate applications to run their operations. QuickBooks for accounting, ACT! for CRM, and a Microsoft Access program for sales order entry, which was created by a friend of the Cohen’s father.

They discovered that relying on disconnected applications does not a smooth-running operation make.

For example, the Boca Terry team was handwriting orders, manually entering their orders into the Access database, and overseeing shipping. In addition, their systems were slow, did not provide operational visibility, and lacked the ability to create simple finance reports. Plus, Edward was tasked with answering customer requests for the status of their orders, which was a difficult, time-consuming job.

It was clear something needed to change, so they searched for a solution that would join their three applications into a single system—and found NetSuite.

Says Bruce, owner and CEO, “NetSuite was pretty difficult to use, and inventory IDs were limited to a certain number of digits. We were facing changing all of them because we used dashes. The problem with NetSuite was that we had to adapt to their system.  By contrast, Acumatica adapts to the customer.”

NetSuite’s out-of-country support teams and complex workflows added to their challenges, so, they embarked on a new search. This search led them to Acumatica.

“Acumatica’s integration and ease of use seemed better than NetSuite,” Edward says. “When we viewed the demos, it was so much more outstanding than anything else we looked at. It fit like a glove and the integration of what we do as a company seemed like it would be a smooth transition.”

How It’s Going

With the help of Acumatica VAR i-Tech Support Inc., Boca Terry implemented Acumatica Retail Edition. The company became more efficient and now has real-time access to accurate information that helps them make faster decisions. “If someone is dealing with two to three or four different applications all day long, Acumatica is the way to go.”

Edward and Bruce’s confidence in Acumatica stems from the many benefits they’ve experienced, including:

• Full visibility into critical business information.
• Instant availability of financial information through various dashboards.
• Automated sales orders, decreasing the number of days it takes to ship an order.
• Improved customer service through updated information about when products will arrive.
• More credit card processing through Acumatica’s integrated credit card processing.
• Automating their administrative tasks (e.g., order confirmation, customer statements, reports, etc.), saving time and money.
• Automated purchase orders and drilling into purchase order notes.
• Insights into the profitability of every item.

These just scratch the surface of all the benefits Acumatica provides, including their ability to remotely access Acumatica’s mobile application and enjoy Acumatica’s native connector for BigCommerce.

“In the old Access system,” says Edward, “we couldn’t bring in sales, and we were probably losing $500,000 a year because we weren’t really connecting it. We would just make journal entries of cash coming in and not associate it every day. Now, every single sales order that comes in from the e-commerce site is automatically uploaded and in Acumatica so we’re able to see that sale.”

How It Looks for the Future

Ultimately, Edward, Bruce, and the Boca Terry team are very grateful they switched from NetSuite to Acumatica. They praise Acumatica’s continual product improvements and are considering integrating with some of Acumatica’s third-party applications to increase their functionality even further.

“Acumatica made my life so much easier. It’s unbelievable,” says Edward, who also says that going with Acumatica is a “no brainer.”

If you want to make your life easier and your business to run more efficiently, contact us to schedule a demonstration.