Mount Zero Olives
Client Story
Jane and Neil Seymour purchased one of the oldest olive groves in Australia in 1993, hoping to start a new life and grow a family business.
After restoring the dilapidated farm, they brought their son Richard on in 2005 to help manage their brand and expand sales - a smart move, as with his help they were recognised as “Melbourne Food and Wine Legends” just a few years later.
As Mount Zero grew from a family farm to a regional copacker and distributor, their business outgrew the inventory management tools included in their accounting software, MYOB. After researching a few options, they reached out to Waypoint.
We recommended switching to DEAR Inventory and Xero to better meet their inventory and accounting needs. With DEAR, Mount Zero was able to automate their stock tracking and gain more accurate sales and inventory data in real-time - which they used to double their bottom line in just 18 months.
Nearly a decade later, their son Richard joined the family business as Managing Director to help manage the brand and grow sales.
The Problem
With a limited amount of farmland available, rather than focusing on increasing production, Richard chose to focus on vertical expansion - growing their manufacturing and distribution capabilities to include specialty products from across their region. The strategy was a success, leading to plenty of revenue growth and earning Mount Zero recognition as “Melbourne Food and Wine Legends” just a few years later.
But, as they grew from family farm to regional copacker and distributor, their business outgrew the less-than-adequate inventory management tools available in MYOB, their accounting software at the time.
MYOB’s inventory module was very basic, forcing Mount Zero to batch their inventory with pen and paper.
In addition to a more complete suite of inventory features, Mount Zero needed deeper data insights into its highest and lowest-selling products, which MYOB just couldn’t provide.
They couldn’t work out the profitability of our products or track the performance of their salespeople. MYOB gave them simplistic bespoke prices, and they couldn’t introduce varied pricing for the same product to offer deals and discounts on a per-customer basis.
These pricing restrictions combined with a lack of advanced inventory tracking and almost no insight into product performance hampered Mount Zero’s expansion and scaling efforts.
The Solution
After trying and failing to find an adequate solution within MYOB’s suite of products, Mount Zero reached out to Waypoint to scope a new solution.
After considering their needs, we landed on DEAR for inventory management and Xero for accounting and tax compliance. The combination offered the power of purpose-built software at a much lower cost than an all-in-one solution.
The Result
Mount Zero was glad to find a near-perfect inventory solution for their business, and is especially happy with DEAR’s batch and expiration date tracking abilities that made food safety compliance a breeze. They can now see their production, fulfilment and sales data all within a couple of clicks.
Before DEAR, Mount Zero had no insight into their sales data and couldn’t batch track their products. That’s all changed, seeing an 18% increase in their top-line revenue in the first year with DEAR thanks to the extra insights at their fingertips.
DEAR has made it easy for Mount Zero to identify which products have eroded margins, identify high-volume low-margin products, and increase their sales price by one or two percent to get their figures where they should have been all along. They can now track inventory movements, costs, and margins down to the item level, and surface which customers need sales support.
Mount Zero went from tracking their products manually to tracking them automatically in DEAR’s dashboard. Plus, the extra data DEAR gave them on their business allowed Mount Zero’s net margin to increase by 4% and their bottom line to double within the last 6 months.
Before DEAR and Xero, implemented by Waypoint, that was far from being easily achieved.
