Having all our flows woven together in Magento is what is most valuable. It is flexible and cost-effective!
Having all our flows woven together in Magento is what is most valuable. It is flexible and cost-effective!
Myggjävlar embeds functionality from Magento
It started with a product from the brand Mosquito Magnet. It was 2008, and the company Acreto was started to distribute Mosquito Magnet in Sweden. Since then, Acreto has grown to become a brand-building distributor with several brands in its portfolio, and has also launched the concept Myggjävlar. Running an e‑commerce for each brand would be unmanageable. Together with Webbhuset, they instead developed a flexible solution that saves time.
Myggjävlar gathers several brands
Myggjävlar is a concept that Acreto launched in 2012. They work with four brands that all focus on keeping mosquitoes away; Thermacell, Mosquito Magnet, Mr Mosquito, and DynaTrap. To unify communication around these brands, and to easily educate consumers about the products, the concept of Myggjävlar was created. The concept quickly became well-known among those who hunt, fish, own summer houses, or otherwise spend a lot of time in nature. Today, Myggjävlar is an e‑commerce platform that also lists resellers and gathers product information.
As an importer and distributor, Acreto focuses on electrical, hardware, construction, and garden trade. You can find the four brands within Myggjävlar at stores like NetOnNet, Jula, Bauhaus, Clas Ohlsson, and Elgiganten. For Acreto, it's important that myggjavlar.se facilitates and complements the work of resellers. The main task of the e‑commerce is to build the brand and spread knowledge. A possible scenario is entering a construction goods store, seeing a mosquito repellent from Thermacell on the shelf, and taking it to the checkout after becoming intrigued by the product following a visit to myggjavlar.se.
A customer portal is prioritized
“I started as e‑commerce manager at Acreto during 2021. At that time, work on obtaining quotes for various e‑commerce solutions had already begun, so I took over that project when I started here. Acreto specifically looked for a local e‑commerce provider here in Gothenburg with experience in both B2B and B2C. Even during the procurement, it was noticeable that Webbhuset was thorough in their work. They had really delved into our requirements specification and amassed the most insight compared to other players. Therefore, the choice fell on Webbhuset. Even during the preliminary study, they were extremely meticulous!” recounts Juhani Mäkinen, e‑commerce manager at Acreto.
"At that time, our resellers placed their orders via phone and email. Considering that we work with 10 different brands, this took an incredible amount of time to administer, which is why we prioritized building a customer portal where we gathered all the brands. The customer portal is fully automated where customers see the correct price, discounts, and assortment in real-time." continues Juhani.
In 2021, Acreto had a website for each brand in their portfolio, but on these sites, there was no e‑commerce. Instead, visitors were linked to shop.acreto.se, and since many did not know the name Acreto, this was perceived as a bit strange and led to few purchases. Here, mosquito repellents were combined with toasters and infrared heaters, making it unclear and difficult to build a brand.
Juhani Mäkinen, e‑commerce manager at Acreto together with his dog Mac.
How to build and manage seven webshops?
At the end of 2021, Acreto launched a customer portal together with Webbhuset on the platform Magento and Fusion Storefront. After that, it was time to tackle the next challenge. How do you build and manage seven webshops in the best way? The websites that Acreto already had were built in WordPress, and there was a lot of internal competence in the tool that they wanted to utilize. Therefore, they looked for solutions to combine WordPress with Magento. It was then that Albert, CTO at Webbhuset, came up with the brilliant idea to embed Magento in WordPress.
The best of both worlds
“You have to give credit to Albert for he was the one who came up with how we could have an e‑commerce for each brand, but at the same time manage everything in one place in Magento. The solution is that each site, such as myggjavlar.se, crockpot.se, and victorskadedjur.se, retrieves part of the product information from Magento, like price and buy button. The rest of what the visitor sees in the product view is WordPress. When you then proceed to the checkout, this functionality is also retrieved from Magento. We have simply picked the raisins out of the cake and use the best from Magento and the best from WordPress.” says Juhani.
The best of both worlds
“You have to give credit to Albert for he was the one who came up with how we could have an e‑commerce for each brand, but at the same time manage everything in one place in Magento. The solution is that each site, such as myggjavlar.se, crockpot.se, and victorskadedjur.se, retrieves part of the product information from Magento, like price and buy button. The rest of what the visitor sees in the product view is WordPress. When you then proceed to the checkout, this functionality is also retrieved from Magento. We have simply picked the raisins out of the cake and use the best from Magento and the best from WordPress.” says Juhani.
Flexible and cost-effective
This means that all technology and integrations are in Magento and that part of the product information is always retrieved from there. By placing the e‑commerce function in Magento and creating all content in WordPress, Acreto can work extremely flexibly and fully utilize its internal expertise. The technical expertise to build and develop the e‑commerce is provided by Webbhuset. When Juhani and colleagues get new ideas and want to develop functionality, a project begins in collaboration with Webbhuset.
“It works very well to work with Webbhuset. They always listen carefully to our wishes, except when they think I’m off track, then they say no. We agree to respect each other's competencies, and we always manage to figure out something good. Sometimes our requests can be a bit vague, and that’s when Webbhuset is good at asking the right questions to find out our needs and what we desire from the delivery. They have always come back with very good solutions and helped us find a good way forward.” says Juhani joyfully.
Optimized integrations
If Acreto had chosen to go another route and managed separate shops in Magento for each e‑commerce, the number of integrations would have become so numerous that it would be unmanageable. By working with only one technical solution in Magento today, there is only one integration to Klarna, one to the ERP system SAP, one to their partner within 3PL, and so on. “Having all our flows woven together in Magento is what is most valuable. It is flexible and cost-effective!” says Juhani.
Marko “Markoolio” Lehtosalo is the new ambassador for Myggjävlar.
Myggjävlar increased turnover by 100%
In 2022, before the mosquito and gnat peak season started, Myggjävlar's e‑commerce was launched. The customer experience transitioned from being redirected to a collective “Acreto store,” to being presented with a user-friendly e‑commerce in line with the brand. This, together with an increased focus on marketing the Myggjävlar concept, resulted in their e‑commerce sales doubling in 2022 compared to the previous year. “For the 2023 season, we have chosen to revamp the entire site focusing on navigation and even clearer communication.” says Juhani.
Taking the next step with Markoolio
“Now that we are taking the next step with Myggjävlar, we hope to get some help from Markoolio. Our marketing department sat down to think about who could be the perfect ambassador for Myggjävlar, and thought of Markoolio. It turned out that Marko Lehtosalo uses our products from Thermacell and that he was eager to be our ambassador. The campaign involves Markoolio redoing his first hit song from 1998, now called Summer, Sun, and Myggjävlar,” says Juhani, who is now hopeful that this will be the summer hit of the year.
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