How Cherry Republic is Taking a Bigger Piece of the Pie with Acumatica

Cherry Republic was born out of Bob Sutherland’s love for Montmorency tart cherries as well as for Glen Arbor, Michigan. It all started in 1989 when he sold t-shirts with the motto “Life, Liberty, Beaches & Pie™” out of the trunk of his car. He eventually branched out, adding an oversized, cherry-inspired cookie to his product line up and selling them to local grocers and convenience stores.

The cookie’s popularity grew, and Bob was able to open his own retail space. Fast forward to today and Cherry Republic’s seven retail stores, one restaurant, one winery, and expanding online presence offer more than 700 cherry-based food, beverage, and gift items to customers across the globe.

According to Bob, Cherry Republic is “the biggest retailer of exclusively cherry products in the world,” and the cherry manufacturer and retailer isn’t slowing down. “We’re still growing.”

They definitely are, but growth doesn’t always come easy. It often brings significant operational challenges—especially when you’re a business operating on split systems that not only produce disconnected data but also require manual inventory tracking.

That’s what Cherry Republic was dealing with before Acumatica’s flexible, integrated, and extensible manufacturing software entered the picture.

Picking Acumatica to Unify Operations

For years, Cherry Republic got by using multiple systems. QuickBooks, Excel, and disconnected POS software made running and managing a growing business all the more challenging.

“Sticky notes, Excel spreadsheets, documents, and a little bit of magic helped us to manage our inventory prior to an ERP system,” explains Roni Hazelton, Senior Vice President of Fulfillment.

These disconnected systems led to limited visibility in their global operations. Being able to access and utilize critical data was beyond challenging. And during the busy holiday season, Data Manager Brett Clark says Cherry Republic had to manually manage their inventory by turning products “off and on the website whenever they became available or out of stock.”

It was time to make a change, so the Cherry Republic team replaced their cobbled-together tech stack with Acumatica’s all-in-one, cloud-based ERP solution. Four years after going live, they tapped Gold-certified Acumatica partner NexTec to help them fully utilize Acumatica.

NexTec’s Kurt Bendykowski, Director of Consulting, says Acumatica is a great fit for companies like Cherry Republic that manage a variety of business operations, including manufacturing, e-commerce, and retail. He also says Acumatica “scales very well as those businesses grow,” which is something Cherry Republic experienced firsthand.

After implementing Acumatica Manufacturing Management software, the company:

• Streamlined processes, which helped them support 15% year-over-year growth.

• Achieved a 20% boost in repeat purchases with integrated sales, inventory, and fulfillment data.
• Increased digital sales by 18% with deeper customer insights.
• Gained real-time visibility into all transactions, inventory, and operations.
• Improved manufacturing and production processes and visibility.
• Eliminated hours of manual data entry through automation.
• Connected its point-of-sale or POS systems, attaining data faster for real-time decision making.
• Acquired updated, accurate inventory data, reducing errors and lowering carrying costs.

And Cherry Republic integrated its POS system with Shopify in just a few clicks of a button in both systems. Carrie Gofron, Global ISV Partnerships, Shopify, says, “Acumatica builds bi-directional data flow between the e-commerce platform and the point of sale so the data they’re able to get in both systems, they can make decisions faster.”

In addition to these faster decisions, the Acumatica-Shopify integration has given them deep customer insights. All seven retail stores use Shopify POS and Shopify handles both e-commerce and in-store POS with a real-time sync to Acumatica. The team can now see what customers have bought as well as where they bought the product, which Dawn Gildersleeve, Cherry Republic’s Retail Flagship General Manager, says is something they couldn’t do with their previous systems.

She also says, “Acumatica is a very friendly, easy-to-use platform for companies that are producing and/or have large inventories.”

Acumatica ERP: The Cherry On Top of Cherry Republic’s Success

For the Cherry Republic team, Acumatica’s customizable, feature-rich ERP solution, which manages all the company’s information and every business process, made them a more cohesive team. Says Julie Meredith, Vice President of Administration “It helps us speak the same language.”

Ultimately, Acumatica took Cherry Republic’s success to the next level, helping them streamline processes, expertly manage their inventory, gain insight into customer behavior, and acquire greater data capture.

“The trust that we have in the data right now is incredible,” Roni says. “Having visibility and automated processes has helped us a lot. It means proactive decisions, particularly in purchasing to make sure we’re purchasing things or manufacturing the products that customers love.”

As for Bob, he says before Acumatica, he only heard when things were not working. Now, the silence is deafening—in a good way. “I no longer hear about the challenges of managing all the data of our company anymore.”

He adds: “When we finally started working with Acumatica, things started to really improve. We finally had traction. Through this, our company is making better decisions. I am more comfortable with my staff making decisions because I know they have the data right there at their fingertips.”

The Cherry Republic growth story is just getting started, and their Acumatica customer success story should inspire other growing manufacturers to review Acumatica’s manufacturing ERP and see if it’s an ideal manufacturing management system for empowering their own success. Contact our team today to schedule a demonstration!