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Lazy Susan is a family-run business with humble origins, having been founded in 2007 by Michael Scott from his garden shed. His main focus at the time was figuring out how customers could maintain various teak and wood garden furniture sets for long-term use. The solution came in the form of aluminium garden furniture, which was maintenance-free, rust-proof. This product decision laid the foundation for the next chapter of Lazy Susan’s business journey.
After comprehensive market research and product testing, Michael finally found a range of furniture sets that felt right for the business and was able to go to market in March 2007 officially under the Lazy Susan Furniture brand name. Since then, Lazy Susan has continually expanded its product range with thousands of products having been successfully delivered to customers all over the UK and Europe. The business continued on its growth trajectory and by 2009 had doubled in sales. Revenue grew from around 200 sets a year to 500 sets and then doubled again by 2011.
Next, the business set its sights on expanding across Europe (including France, Germany, Spain, Italy and the Netherlands). Lazy Susan also started shipping garden furniture on a regular basis to Belgium, Switzerland, Austria and Portugal and the the ecommerce team are now working on localised online stores for these countries.
Today, Lazy Susan is a fast-growing business with a highly motivated and dedicated team whose primary objective is to deliver outstanding customer service and quality products at competitive prices.
Demand was increasing and Lazy Susan had outgrown its current set up. The ecommerce team was facing several challenges, including:
Alongside replatforming, Lazy Susan was looking for a long-term partner to aid both on the strategic as well as the tactical and development side. The team also required support in reevaluating their current tech stack and ERP based on their replatforming needs. The growing number of ecommerce integrations was becoming too complex to handle for the team and they were looking to find a partner, who would help them assess and prioritise which integrations drove the most value for the business.
An added challenge at the time was also rolling out a solution that would help solve Brexit restrictions for Lazy Susan’s international customers and this became a business critical topic that needed to be addressed immediately.
"GPMD came on board to help us through an enormous backlog of work following a period of intense growth. Thanks to their high quality problem solving skills, communication and holistic approach, we were able to smash through everything we set out to and more! Very excited to continue this partnership and would highly recommend the team."
In early 2020, Lazy Susan launched a brand new website on the ecommerce platform Shopware. The replatform allowed Lazy Susan to scale its business quickly and to facilitate connecting new integrations which increased efficiency. One such example was integrating Odoo as the ERP system, which freed up resources all round.
The team was able to:
Additionally, Lazy Susan added new technologies to their site to enhance customer experience. For instance, Trustpilot was added to allow for customer reviews, which is a strong lever for social proof within Lazy Susan’s growing community. FINDOLOGIC, on the other hand, was implemented for its powerful search capabilities, a key feature for Lazy Susan’s target audience.
The new setup also allowed Lazy Susan to automate a lot of its processes, significantly cutting down the time and resources needed to maintain the site. The speed of development increased and the team was able to focus on further optimising the site and building out its current tech stack. Despite the lockdown, the conversion rate continued to increase and the site saw massive growth (145% in revenue).
On the agency side, Lazy Susan chose GPMD as a development partner to improve its current onsite customer experience. Over time the relationship with GPMD has evolved into the agency acting as a trusted advisor, informing on both the ecommerce and marketing strategies. For Lazy Susan to achieve their ambitious goals, GPMD helped the ecommerce team prioritise and decide on key site projects that would achieve the strongest results. This targeted approach allowed the brand to test and finetune each element on the website.
In 2022, Lazy Susan has been closely partnering with GPMD on all areas of their online business, including operations, ecommerce and marketing. On the ecommerce side, Lazy Susan and GPMD are working on a robust infrastructure for long-term growth. On the operations side, Lazy Susan and GPMD are scaling up the functionalities for Odoo and other integrations to build a solid foundation. The agency also brought in their Marketing Director, Lena to help Lazy Susan define their key objectives to improve the marketing strategy as a part of a new service. She has also been advising Lazy Susan in building out email and social media marketing as engagement and revenue channels to drive conversions, revenue and increase the customer lifetime value.
