Case Studies

The BeadSmith Case Study

After a disastrous payment implementation with another provider, The BeadSmith found the care, partnership and global payment capabilities they needed with BlueSnap and its native NetSuite integration.

“After working with the BlueSnap team, I realized they were a much better partner based on the care and attention they provided and their ability to easily explain what was happening.”

Ronnie Weinblut, CEO at The BeadSmith

Who Is The BeadSmith?

The BeadSmith, a manufacturer and wholesaler of beads, tools, stringing materials and other jewelry-making and crafting supplies, was founded over 40 years ago. What began as a side hustle in a retired teacher’s garage has grown into a second-generation family business with 50,000-square-foot headquarters in New Jersey, an EU distribution facility, 4,000 independent distributors and plans to establish an office in Asia. With more than 80 employees, The BeadSmith works with bead stores, mass merchandisers and major crafting chain stores (such as Michaels, Hobby Lobby and Joann) to provide high-quality products to its global customer base.

The Challenge

?The BeadSmith has operated a B2B eCommerce website since 2006 and used a basic but reliable credit card processor for several years. While the processor required substantial manual work from The BeadSmith’s accounts receivable manager, the system worked well with the company’s existing ERP and met its needs for that stage of the business.

In December 2023, The BeadSmith went live with NetSuite as its ERP, and the legacy payment processor proved incompatible. Ronnie Weinblut, CEO at The BeadSmith, explained, “The data wasn’t transferring cleanly between the two. This created a big headache for our AR department — extra work, canceling transactions, reentering them manually. It was very challenging.” The issues stalled the company’s momentum on NetSuite, and the lack of steady cash flow caused stress within the business.

Weinblut sought a new payment processor and thought his problems were solved when they met with one that was sponsoring a NetSuite event. This particular vendor said they could get everything live in two weeks. However, the promised timeline turned into a 10-week holding pattern before implementation occurred. Even then, challenges persisted and his requests for escalation of critical issues were ignored.

“We were hopeful things would work out,” says Weinblut. “There were criteria we had from the way we process our charges that we were told wouldn’t be an issue. Then, once we went live, we were told, ‘Oh, sorry, you can’t do it that way.’”

Customers were seeing that transactions went through, when the transactions were not getting approved on the back-end. It took “hundreds of hours of my AR department deleting transactions and reentering transactions manually within NetSuite; it was like crisis mode,” describes Weinblut. “In my almost 30 years of system management, that was the worst implementation I’ve ever had. Everything was a disaster. Support and service were not what I would have expected.”

Weinblut realized that although his business was in jeopardy, the payment vendor “didn’t see it as any type of issue on their end. It wasn’t as critical to them as it was to me.” He needed a payment processor that integrated with NetSuite and offered the functionality his business required, but also provided adequate support when issues arose.
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The Solution

?Weinblut was first introduced to BlueSnap Global Payments for NetSuite specifically to support the payments for The BeadSmith’s EU subsidiary — “something the other NetSuite processors could not support. We were told that from a SuiteCommerce perspective, BlueSnap would work with what we needed.”

While Weinblut briefly discussed the company’s US needs with BlueSnap during discovery, he was really focused on finding an EU solution. ‘When we started the conversation, BlueSnap said they could handle the US payments too, but I still thought we could get the first processor to work,” says Weinblut. “But after working with the BlueSnap team, I realized they were a much better partner based on the care and attention they provided and their ability to easily explain what was happening.”

The BeadSmith decided to partner with BlueSnap for all their credit card payment processing. Based on his past experience of integrations malfunctioning at critical points, Weinblut wanted to thoroughly test implementation prior to going live. The BlueSnap team took time to make sure everything was done correctly and resolved issues in a timely manner, regularly checking in with Weinblut’s team and scheduling follow-up meetings to ensure that processes were running smoothly after going live. With BlueSnap’s native NetSuite integration?, implementation and rollout went quickly. Even with additional testing, The BeadSmith was live with BlueSnap in four weeks. “I felt like there was a priority being put on our implementation that I just didn’t get with the previous processor,” says Weinblut.

“To me, the relationship management of an account is really one of the most important things in business. Check-ins, requests for follow-ups — everything was really handled in a manner that impressed me, and I knew I had a partner to rely on.” ?

The Results

Over the past several months, The BeadSmith has regained momentum with its NetSuite integration by partnering with BlueSnap.

“I would definitely recommend BlueSnap as a partner. You’re not chasing and confirming that everything’s done right. You can’t run a business that way. We’re doing an average of 200 to 300 transactions a day on credit cards — I need to make sure everything runs correctly,” says Weinblut.

“The fact that everything works the way it needs to in our basic environment — that has definitely been a relief.”

Other notable benefits he highlighted include:

Strategic Implementation: “We were live four weeks from the time we agreed to move forward on the US side of things; there were really no hiccups. We tested all the different scenarios that I’d had issues with previously, made sure all the logs were coming in correctly and anytime I had questions or requested additional meetings, I got responses and acceptance immediately.”

Working with a Single Provider: Working from a single source of truth creates a seamless experience for The BeadSmith team. “Originally, we were going to have one processor for our US subsidiary and a second processor for our European subsidiary. To have it all under one umbrella and have that bulk processing looked at as one account was a nice incentive for us. It avoids confusion with everything being the same.”

Foundation for International Growth: The BeadSmith exports to over 70 countries and works with every country in the EU – their multi-entity needs are one of the reasons partnering with BlueSnap made sense. The BeadSmith also works with accounts in the Middle East, Australia and India, and BlueSnap’s optimized global payment capabilities allow the company to seamlessly work with existing customers while supporting the possibility of future growth. “Knowing that you are able to expand globally with one partner is a massive help to us,” says Weinblut.