Dick Johnson wants to offer men – and dudes – a lifestyle package. The story began with hair cream in 2014.
– Dick Johnson was established to bring proper hair cream to the Finnish market. At the same time, a beard boom began and took off well, says Dick Johnson CEO and founder Leevi Kangas.
The business grew up around barber shops, online stores and imports. For a while now, the most popular product has been the testicle wax, which is made in Finland.
Eventually, the basics had to be sorted out. To enable growth, the business had to concentrate its operations and warehouses in the same place. For Dick Johnson, what made this possible was Shopify and the attached apps.
Over 30,000 testicle wax tubs later
Dick Johnson had already used Shopify on a smaller scale. They had used it to sell testicle wax online.
– The testicle wax has been a product that’s been popular with everyone. It can be translated into every language and gets people laughing everywhere, Kangas says, describing the hit product.
The people at Dick Johnson were finally won over, however, when the Hyvinvoinnin Tavaratalo wellness store put its online store on Shopify. Hyvinvoinnin.fi has a range of several thousand products.
– Woolman came into the picture via the Hyvinvoinnin online store. We realised that with Shopify we could sell an even wider range, Kangas says.
Business drivers in the same place
The division of labour in the online store process was clear. The people at Dick Johnson got the basic settings of the online store in order. Woolman dealt with the code and got the apps needed for business operations into working order.
– Our aim was to open a new online store in four weeks. A big thanks is due to Woolman for making that happen.
A new dickjohnson.fi and a Swedish-language online store were opened in spring 2018.
It was important to make all the systems and add-ons that supported the Dick Johnson business a part of Shopify.
A warehouse management and picking program was chosen to support the whole package. This program meant that the Dick Johnson barber shops, the new brick-and-mortar shop and the online stores could be accessed via a single app.
– The marketing work is done on Shopify and the logistics side is handled via the app. We can maintain a good cashflow in several online stores, Kangas says.
Multi-channel trading and automation
For Dick Johnson, the aim this year is to get the basics right. As the multi-channel trading was being honed into peak condition, the marketing problems were also resolved.
– Our earlier e-commerce solution did not have automated email marketing. Now Shopify includes Mailchimp, meaning product information flows seamlessly from the store to the newsletter. The Facebook sales channel also runs smoothly.
– These features are really important for us, because the newsletter and Facebook generate an awful lot of sales. And the sales are really down to how well Shopify is integrated into these systems, Kangas says.
Bringing functions together in the same place, and the automation that this makes possible, frees up employees. There is more time to focus on selling, and, through that, on growth.
– There’s a strong drive and lots of passion! We’ve grown fast. We’re trying to expand the Dick Johnson product range. Cosmetics are our main field at the moment, but now we have also brought clothes into the mix.
