Sports Equipment On a Subscription Basis.
Enter Paceheads - a customer-centric company that prioritises flexibility to explore, test, and enjoy a variety of sports equipment before buying them.
But the absence of a dedicated solution to manage such a business model, created operational complexities that hindered scalability.
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Company Profile.
Sector.
Founded.
Industry
Product.
Founder.
Website.
Paceheads Business Model.
Flexible Alternative to Purchasing — "Try-before-you-buy" or Simply Subscribe.
The Paceheads subscription service allows subscribers to not only test but to truly experience high-quality sports equipment at home before making a commitment.
Paceheads’ subscription service allows customers to rent premium sports equipment for up to 12 months.
Customers can leisurely test devices, ensuring they align with their fitness goals and preferences before deciding to make a purchase. The beauty lies in the flexibility—after the trial phase, devices can either be adopted permanently or gracefully returned.
After the minimum subscription period of three months is over, subscribers can return, buy, or continue subscribing.
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The Challenge:
Operational Challenges Stemming from eCommerce Platforms Focused on Sales, Not Rentals.
While the practice of selling products online aka e-commerce has been perfected due to its decade long inception, renting products such as sports equipment on a monthly subscription basis was a relatively new concept in 2018.
But the absence of dedicated solutions, led to operational challenges.
#1 Manual Workload ≠ Scalability.
Paceheads struggled with the workload associated with subscription operations Since there was no tool to automate basic operations, Paceheads had to undertake everything manually.
This involved operations such as tracking orders in spreadsheets, manually initiating product delivery, manually creating, maintaining and ending subscriptions, tracking products return dates in spreadsheet etc.
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#2 Onboarding New Customers — A Nightmare.
Ecommerce solutions like shop systems operate on a sales-flow, that is, the operations are designed to take care of activities leading upto purchase.
But subscription-based ecommerce goes beyond that. Paceheads desired a smooth end-to-end customer journey, that started with order but continued beyond product delivery.
#3 Unique Value Proposition Came With Complex Setup.
The company's unique subscription model of trying before buying required special adjustments that other software solutions couldn't offer.
The Solution —
A Software Solution Designed for Physical Product Subscriptions.
#1 Automated Operations & Workflows to Facilitate Scalability.
circuly enabled Paceheads to move away from their Spreadsheets and bring their existing subscriptions to the circuly Operations backend where they could truly automate their operations and scale their subscription business.
- ✅ Automated Billing & Invoicing.
- ✅ Automated transactional customer communication.
- ✅ Custom and automated flow for renewals and cancellation.
#2 Predefined End-to-end Customer Journey.
circuly closed the loop of the customer journey, automating common operations such as payment processing, invoicing, email communication, and reminders. This ensured a streamlined process from order placement to product return.
Additionally, circuly's white-label self-service portal provided Pacheads a dedicated solution to nail customer experience and reduce customer support dependencies.
#3 A Custom Setup to Match Complexity.
circuly offered unique features that aligned with Paceheads complex subscription model, addressing specific needs that other solutions couldn't.
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A Journey of 4 Years.
A word from circuly's founder —
Nick.
The circuly software solution and the team behind it have supported the circularity of thousands of products and kept them away from landfills.
But the hard work of our customers, like Paceheads, is what’s actually driving all of us towards a more sustainable future.
I'm super thrilled to be working with companies like Paceheads because together we can expedite the change from a linear economy towards a circular economy.
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