The Origin Story

Bene Footwear’s story began in 1991 in Upper Hutt, New Zealand. Originally a small store focused on safety and first aid supplies, they gradually transitioned to wholesale distribution of high-quality footwear and rebranded to Bene Footwear.

Today, they have a network of dedicated distributors across New Zealand, bringing three incredible brands, Andrew Footwear, Grisport, and Crispi, to customers nationwide.

The Neverending Hunt

Like most small companies, Bene Footwear started by managing their stock with handwritten invoices and statements before adopting a software solution. For 25 years, this solution worked.  

However, in the last ten years, they became increasingly dissatisfied with the “on-prem” software, which was too slow and costly and becoming rapidly outdated by not evolving to keep pace with the new era of cloud technology, software-as-a-service (SaaS).  

Ed Lenders, Director of Bene Footwear, explains,  "They changed from being a flexible personal company to a corporate company. Every time there was an upgrade, software was more difficult to use and became more expensive.”

With frustration mounting, Bene Footwear made the decision to search for a new software solution. For two years, they looked for an alternative that could tick all their boxes. As a wholesale company, it was difficult to find something that could do everything they wanted, but Bene Footwear continued their relentless hunt for the perfect solution.  

During this search, they stumbled across Tidy, a stock and project management solution that seamlessly integrated with Xero, an accounting software.  

“At first, Tidy couldn’t do everything we needed, but they had a good attitude to get us everything we wanted,” Ed says.

“We also liked that Tidy is New Zealand-based, and we would end up with a much better package than what we had previously.”

Understanding the steep learning curve involved with changing software, Ed researched Tidy thoroughly and had the software trialled by other members of staff before taking the plunge.  

Bene Footwear now uses TidyStock, Tidy’s inventory management solution, in their day-to-day operations. In conjunction with Xero, Tidy is now how they work to process all orders and control stock.  

Crafting the Perfect Look

While stock control at Bene Footwear was now running smoothly, they were also battling another issue. Their B2B website was built to work with their former stock management software solution, which was often slow and required a lot of patches and other software to make it work.

“It was very expensive to build, cost a lot of money to run every month, and was never designed to be used as an e-commerce platform,” Ed says.  

After a disappointing attempt to remake their B2B website with their own web developers and a large European-based e-commerce platform, Bene Footwear reached out to Tidy for help and discovered TidyCommerce, an e-commerce solution that connected with TidyStock.

“I got talking with Daryl [Operations Director at Tidy], and given our short timeframe and costs, we decided to rebuild with TidyCommerce,” recalls Ed.

“The package that Tidy offered us was unbelievably good. We were well looked after the entire time, and we really felt that Daryl and Alice looked after us on our journey.”  

Alice Holloway, Tidy’s web developer, worked on the site, and her extensive knowledge of TidyCommerce allowed her to work quickly, completing it in just two weeks. She describes the build as a “simple process”.  

“I started by logging in to Bene's TidyStock account to understand their needs and customer price tiers. From there, it was easy to connect the API and transfer the data across from TidyStock into TidyCommerce,” she explains.  

“Once this was done, they only needed to tweak the minor changes they wanted to the visual layout of the B2B and test!”

The Final Solution

Bene Footwear and their customers are delighted with the website, and Ed raves about his experience:

“We were really impressed with Daryl’s passion and technical knowledge. We wanted a B2B site that our customers would love to use, so we listened to them, and they love it.”

Today, TidyStock and TidyCommerce work as a powerful duo in Bene Footwear’s daily operations, increasing customer satisfaction at the storefront and streamlining internal processes behind the scenes.  

Their journey from handwritten invoices to integrated cloud-based inventory management and e-commerce solutions with Tidy has been transformative. Bene Footwear stands as a testament to the benefits of perseverance in finding the right tools to propel their business forward.