Saddleback Leather Company Buckles in for Fast Growth on BigCommerce

High-quality leather goods accessible to everyone.

When you step into Saddleback Leather Company’s headquarters in Azle, Texas, it’s hard to believe that it all began on the floor of a hut in Juarez, Mexico. Through almost two decades, Saddleback founder Dave Munson has turned what was originally a one-off book bag into a worldwide brand synonymous with craftsmanship and quality.

Saddleback has grown into so much more than just bags, from wallets to glasses cases and everything in between. They’ve also expanded with a new brand, Love 41, and have created partnerships with some of the world’s most recognizable businesses. But all of this growth hasn’t come without pain points, especially when it came to their early ecommerce platforms.

CHALLENGE

Growing pains turned into a real growing pain.

Saddleback entered the world of ecommerce with NetSuite, but found it challenging to add the functionality they desired. They switched their ERP away from NetSuite to Acumatica, and were very impressed with the new tool. “When we switched from NetSuite to Acumatica, everyone thought, ‘Man, this is so easy. Is it supposed to be this easy?’” Munson said.

They also moved their website to a new platform: Magento. At first, it provided exactly what they were looking for, but the initial excitement quickly turned to frustration.

After adding more and more functionality to their site, the Saddleback team found that they were overcomplicating their back-end, leading to excess bloat and long load times, which caused a high bounce rate. “It was taking seven, eight seconds to load our site,” he explained.

Not only that, but constant updates and site maintenance kept them from focusing on growing the business. “We’d want to try something new on the site, and my team would come back saying ‘Maybe six months for implementation.’ What a drag,” he said.

They had spent years on underperforming platforms. Munson knew that he needed to find the right fit for his business — a platform that was easy to use, flexible and agile, one that could provide a stable foundation for growth but pivot quickly when and how he wanted it to. It was also important to find a solution that seamlessly connected with Acumatica, their ERP.

SOLUTION

Finding a powerful platform backed by a team dedicated to success.

Munson found out about BigCommerce while attending an Acumatica event. “When we saw BigCommerce and Acumatica paired up, it was a no brainer,” he said. “BigCommerce was easy to use and very powerful, just like Acumatica.”

Saddleback then started to migrate their site onto the new platform. “We wanted a platform where customer support matched the level we give our customers," he explained. “I talked to the CEO of BigCommerce, Brent Bellm, myself, which is rare for someone to be able to do. That gave us a clue that BigCommerce really valued the relationship. We found the customer service to be fantastic and super responsive.”

“The BigCommerce team we worked with was amazing,” he continued. “Our Implementation Project Manager was fantastic. We had a 3.5-month timeline to go live and he really pushed our team and the BigCommerce team to ensure we were done before the deadline and that any and all issues were fixed prior to launch. He went above and beyond to ensure we had a smooth launch.”

Tina Lytch, IT Manager at Saddleback Leather Company and Co-Founder of Love 41, is also ecstatic about the level of customer service Saddleback has received from BigCommerce.

“With BigCommerce, we have regular two-week meetings with our Customer Success Manager, and she’s actually there to help us succeed. I’ve never had that before,” she said. “I’ve been with the company for 15 years through all our different platforms, and we never had somebody that was on a team with us and wanted us to succeed. For the first time ever, I feel like Saddleback and Love 41 have a partner that wants to help us grow.”

Making marketing waves with new brands and innovations.

Switching to BigCommerce has helped the Saddleback Leather team become more agile in their sales and marketing techniques. Since first migrating, they have developed a robust blog filled with valuable SEO content that helps boost their rankings in search. Using BigCommerce’s native product page functionality, they are also able to improve SEO for their individual products.

“In each product it gives you all the fields that you need to populate,” says Lytch. “It kind of coaches you on what you need to place in the description for each page.”

In an effort to bring their physical goods into the future of the web, their team created Saddleback NFTs, a unique branding campaign which earned them a gold medal from the American Advertising Federation for Best Online Ecommerce Campaign.

“We have an artist on staff who created these beautiful pieces of art. We signed 100 of them for each bag, and every month last year we would release a new one. If you bought it, you would get the bag, the physical painting and the NFT of the art to go along with it,” Munson explained. “You can put it in your virtual house, your virtual office, in the entrance, wherever you want.”

While the company has been able to expand its digital flexibility, they’ve also been able to focus on growing outside of their core brand. Dave’s wife and business partner, Suzette, was inspired in her own way to help contribute to the company’s core principle of putting people first by creating Love 41, a brand separate from Saddleback that gives away 100% of its profits to families in need.

“We were taking a trip around the world and ended up in Africa,” she explained. “While we were in Rwanda, there were 300 to 400 street kids running at us who were hungry. It really kind of shook me. I kept having this recurring dream about it, and it really drove me to create this brand within Saddleback Leather where we give away 100% of the profits from our bags.”

RESULTS

Streamlining operations unlocks greater productivity and increased revenue.

Saddleback Leather has seen immense success in their time on BigCommerce, with revenue increasing 43%. Munson attributes this growth to not only his internal team, but also to the fact that BigCommerce has allowed them to pivot so quickly in a competitive ecommerce environment.

“Every platform does about the same thing,” Munson said. “What really matters is the speed at which these little details get done. It used to take six months to do something, versus six days or six hours on BigCommerce. That's a big difference. It puts wind in my sails.”

“On our old platforms, I had all these ideas and our marketing team had ideas, but it would take so long to get something done. It’s like I stopped dreaming, almost,” Munson said with a sigh. “But now we can get these things done. Now it's a matter of raising the average order value, raising the conversion rate. That's what I like about BigCommerce. It's really helped us to speed up our business.”

Lytch has also experienced drastic improvements with her IT team. “What we’ve seen since we started using BigCommerce is that we’ve been able to be more efficient with less staff,” she explained. “It’s so easy to use and efficient. We have been able to minimize our team because we don’t have so many tickets coming in. It’s just so easy to train everyone on our staff on the specifics of what they need to use.”

LOOKING AHEAD

Focusing on the big picture — and the future.

The future is coming fast for Saddleback Leather Company. With the stress of ecommerce platform management off of his shoulders, Munson has been able to focus on turning his brand into something more than a bag; he’s working to turn Saddleback into an experience.

Partnerships with brands from around the globe are propelling them into new markets and new industries. But that’s not all. He’s also working on a new headquarters — the world’s first headquarters made entirely of leather — and buildings on their property for visitors to stay in and truly experience everything Saddleback and the great state of Texas have to offer.

Lytch is excited to be able to use her time thinking about the future of both Saddleback and Love 41, rather than drowning in support tickets or training staff on how to make updates to their site.

“Being part of the operations team for Saddleback and Love 41, now I can look at the bigger picture of where we want to go,” she explains. “Now we can look to the future. What kind of things can we bring on since we’re not using up all of our time with the small things.”

As the company rockets into new territory, no one is more excited about the ecommerce frustration-free future than Suzette. “I’m not the IT person in our business, but I do know about what we faced in the past. My husband was coming home at night, frustrated, and bringing that stress with him. Moving over to BigCommerce, let me just say it's helped our marriage a lot, because the stress level has gone way down,” she said with a laugh. “I'm a better mom for it. Dave is a better father because of it. Thank you, BigCommerce!”

Published: May 2023