Hourglass Cosmetics NetSuite Implementation by GSI

About the Client

Headquartered in Venice, CA, Hourglass is a cruelty-free luxury beauty cosmetics company that was started in 2004 by its founder and CEO, Carisa James. In 2017, the company was acquired by Unilever, adding to Unilever’s portfolio of Prestige brands. Today, the company employs 280 people around the world, operates under six legal entities, and does half their business in the United States and half internationally. It works with over 1,000 stores worldwide including Sephora, Barneys New York, Nordstrom’s, Bergdorf Goodman, and more. Hourglass also has two retail locations location in Venice, CA and New York City, as well as an online retail website.

Challenges the Client Faced

With a very complicated business model, Hourglass deals directly with its many customers, suppliers and manufacturers, whenever feasible. The company has more than 30 suppliers and purchases almost 8,000 separate items required to make over 450 SKUs. After being acquired by Unilever which was running SAP, the company had very aggressive growth plans, but needed a better system to support this planned growth. They had been using an outdated accounting system by Sage as well as a buggy WMS system. All intercompany accounting for the 6 legal entities, dealing in 16 currencies, had to be done outside their
systems with a staff of only 4 in finance.

As part of their evaluation, Hourglass needed to select a system that could handle all their day-to-day processes directly in the system. The solution also needed to have strong work order, intercompany, multi-currency, and reporting capabilities. Hourglass evaluated various solutions from SAP, Oracle, and other providers as part of their due diligence, but ultimately determined that NetSuite was the best solution to address their needs. NetSuite offered a cloud-based solution, which required no IT staff to support it. NetSuite would also allow them to run all their processes directly in the system. Based on their expertise, GSI was selected to handle the implementation.

GSI's Solution

After implementing NetSuite, Hourglass can run all their day-to-day business processes in NetSuite, eliminating much of the manual effort previously required. “Hourglass was able to eliminate hundreds of hours of work each month as well as position the company for major international growth with a finance staff of 4,” said Josh Rosenzweig, CFO/COO for Hourglass.

Hourglass now has immediate visibility into the profitability of their products and customers, allowing them to be more competitive. “Using NetSuite OneWorld, we are now able to get real-time visibility into the profitability of our business, working across 6 legal entities, 16 currencies, and almost 8,000 separate items” Rosenzweig went on to say.

GSI was instrumental in the success of the project. “GSI was the only partner that said they could handle our complex accounting and contextual business reporting needs, including incorporating our parent company’s chart of accounts. They delivered on all fronts.”

The final solution also included EDI, Adaptive Insights, Deposco WMS, and Shopify integrations with 5 APIs. In the future, Unilever will also be looking to leverage NetSuite for some of its other Prestige brands.