Case Study: WildWestFish Direct-to-Consumer Sales

John Law is the founder of WildWestFish, an artisanal seafood products business. He has spent over two decades building his commercial fishing pedigree. John and his business partner, Victoria, have passionately devoted years to growing their business one customer at a time.

Now, they’ve scaled their business to include individual customers across California, along with restaurants and food service providers. WildWestFish uses Airmart as a way to connect with customers across diverse communities.

Taking the Bait: How They Got Started Using Airmart

During the height of the pandemic, WildWestFish’s tool for managing online orders was unexpectedly shut down without prior notice. Left without a way to capture sales, co-founder Victoria rushed to find a quick replacement to avoid losing sales. Other grocers in her community recommended Airmart, so she immediately reached out to the team to learn more.

After getting in touch with a customer success manager at Airmart, Victoria received a demo to learn how to use the tool. She was then able to quickly get her shop set up on Airmart and start selling again.

WildWestFish’s experience with Airmart

Up-to-date inventory

With Airmart, WildWestFish customers can see inventory change in real-time. The store displays the number of previous orders and how much fish is left in stock. This gives customers the confidence to place their own orders.

Efficient delivery

Airmart’s efficient delivery services help bring each fresh catch to customers in a timely manner.

Flash sales

One of the team’s favorite features is the ability to quickly post for flash community delivery. Unlike previous tools they’ve used, Airmart is super user-friendly, so WildWestFish doesn’t have to hire a specialized marketing manager or a web developer to update product listings. Once the flash offer expires, they don’t need to worry about taking down the post or updating their page.

Airmart also hosts shops without monthly subscription fees, so they don’t need to pay for a website URL or hosting. This makes offering limited specialty items a breeze. These specialty flash sales set WildWestFish apart from the competition.

Reel ‘Em In: Airmart’s Digital Storefront and Order Management System

For WildWestFish, freshness is the name of the game. Fish ranks among one of the most perishable grocery items. Rather than focus on commercial frozen filets for mass distribution, WildWestFish is one of the rare vendors to deliver whole fish to their customers. Customers appreciate the whole fish as a sign of freshness and authenticity.

When WildWestFish secures a fresh catch of specialty fish, such as rockfish, halibut, or white sea bass, they upload inventory to their Airmart shop. From there, customers can pre-order, submit payment, and arrange delivery all in one place.

Results with Airmart

Community-driven growth

Airmart allows WildWestFish to consistently deliver fresh and quality seafood to hyper-localized communities. These communities then share the store links, which drives repeat and loyal customers.

Time savings

Airmart helps WildWestFish reduce the time spent managing orders and delivery information. This leaves the owners free to focus on providing high-quality and fresh food to their customers.

Running a fresh seafood business is a race against the clock to ensure the freshness of whole fish. Once a fish is caught, there’s a limited time window for the fish to remain fresh without undergoing commercial preservation. With this challenge, WildWestFish relies on Airmart to reduce the operational time of managing an order.

Customization

Unlike a typical drag-and-drop e-commerce platform, Airmart lets WildWestFish customize their offerings depending on the seasonality of their seafood products.

Plenty of Fish in the Sea: How WildWestFish Continues to Grow

Human connection and integrity represent the core of WildWestFish’s sales success. Airmart helps to facilitate this connection across social media and in message groups with shareable shop links. Word-of-mouth marketing like this works well for WildWestFish, because they consistently deliver fresh and quality seafood.

Through this strategy, they’ve even been able to acquire new repeat customers who’ve been skeptical of specific seafood brands. Without Airmart, WildWestFish couldn’t facilitate this type of community-driven growth in customers or maintain the necessary speed to safeguard their perishable goods.

Making a Splash: WildWestFish’s Future

WildWestFish is a brand that cares deeply about customer connections and strengthening communities. They face the challenge and opportunity to establish and sustain close ties with customers in a world where interactions between brands and consumers increasingly migrate online. WildWestFish and Airmart believe that there’s an immense opportunity to forge human and digital connections.

WildWestFish is making a splash by delivering on its promise of impeccable quality and price transparency. From one community to the other, they’ll continue to offer the consistent experience of delicious and sustainably harvested seafood directly to customers by relying on the Airmart platform as their net for business.