SuiteWorld 25 - BERO raises a glass to NetSuite to bring scaling to a head

The BERO Brewing company was founded barely two years ago by Spiderman actor Tom Holland and John Herman, with the aim of providing non-alcoholic beer for an increasingly health conscious and growing market.

Co-founder Herman had an extensive background in the beverage industry, and said that although he and Holland realized early on that there was a big opportunity in the non-alcoholic and mindful drinking market, he knew that operational scalability would be key to the company’s success.

Much of 2024 was spent working on branding, positioning, building the recipes, and getting supply chain and operational systems in place.A decision was taken right at the start to build its operations on NetSuite’s cloud based ERP, because it would help the company scale as it grew.

Herman recruited Neha Soi, as SVP Operations. She has extensive experience of running operations in startup companies, and all the inherent problems that trying to scale them brings. Soi’s previous NetSuite experience in a startup has been invaluable. Herman explains:

We're a couple weeks in, and Neha came to me and said, ‘I know every startup does this hodgepodge of plugins, but what if we had an ERP from the beginning?’

Soi picks up the story:

In my previous company we used a bunch of smaller systems, until year four, and we hit 500 million sales, and we thought, ‘OK, now we need to get a real system’. We looked at all of the ones that were out there, and NetSuite was by far the most credible system.

Her previous company worked very closely with implementation partner Luxent, to figure out which modules it needed:

It can be extremely overwhelming. What I found to be super challenging is that when you're in year four of your business scaling so quickly, you don't have the mind share to break all your processes and rebuild them for a new system. So you end up in this very challenging spot. You're trying to make workarounds, you're trying to make things happen while also trying to implement a system.

Doing differently

At BERO Soi wanted to do things differently, and asked Luxent to look at whether they could implement NetSuite from the start and within budget:

I fundamentally think this is going to change how companies use NetSuite, if you can see a way to access it from day one. It was the best thing we ever did because all of our processes, both financial and operational, are rooted in NetSuite. Now, as we scale and do all these international things, all we're doing is adding modules, not recreating and doing work arounds. We're just building on what we have. It is really cool to see it come to life. It was a little bit of a risk, but it worked.

BERO started with the core ERP, and has added extensions on top, she recalls:

We’ve added modules and have been able to grow really quickly, and Luxent has helped us navigate through adding those. I think that it is really critical, when we're so young, to have somebody that knows the system so well and helps us navigate through it, and it means we are really efficient in how we're doing it.

Herman argues that this approach also means the data the company uses is really solid, and gives them a big advantage as BERO grows:

I think you have to be able to trust your numbers, and operate at a high level, so your retailers don't view it as a startup risk for them. They view you as a strategic partner on day one. That's where we really tried to grow up very quickly and make sure our systems were at a process level that was far advanced and more mature than our company was.

He adds:

I have solid visibility of inventory, and all balance sheet metrics. For me, the brand needs to be on point, and we need to be able to operate for our customers, but then it's really important for me to have credibility with my investors. I think that being bulletproof was non-negotiable.

Soi says that in her previous company getting access to financial data could be very time consuming, a problem avoided at BERO:

In my past life I saw the challenge was the ability to have P&L access quickly, by channel, and to be able to provide that data. I think last time, every time we needed to do it, it was like a whole swirl of, how do we get this information? This is now extremely simple, and we're able to pull it and have the conversations and make the decisions that need to be made, and provide the information, all very turnkey.

Tough

Herman admits that the first few months, once it was actually shipping and realizing revenue, were tough:

We were figuring out the processes to make it actually scale. But then it just started working. We understood where we were going.

Looking to the future, he also made an unusual decision for a start-up, which was to create a senior role to head up all things data, automation, and AI.

For her part, Soi believes BERO needs to be mindful about introducing AI:

We're still learning our business, and I think before we jump into so much AI, we have to look at our foundation. We are really trying to get predictive and ahead of the curve, and AI will help with demand forecasting and documentation and automating. I think our plan is to hopefully reduce headcount by enabling more AI enhancements. However, I want to be mindful of how we do it, and be very choiceful about how we enact it as we scale and learn more and more about the business.

Herman agrees:

I think we're probably thinking really progressively about AI compared to anyone, and I bet if you look a year out for now, we're nowhere near where we will be. But in my head there's a line between operational AI usage, so coding systems for data availability and reporting, versus consumer touch points. We all philosophically agree that AI touching consumers feels wrong. But if there's a world where we can use automated systems and processes that are enabled by AI that allow for smart people to do more smart, impactful things I'm all for that.

Herman believes that in eight months, the company is going to go from being the new brand to being in the top two in the US, and doing well in Europe as well:

We're going to be operating at a high level in Europe, because that market is very ripe and really coming forward. We're focused on trying to build up within the ‘on premise’ bars and restaurants where people actually have drinks. The composition of our company is going to look really different.

Soi concludes:

Ultimately from an investment standpoint, we'll be activating all these NetSuite modules that we have and really seeing the value of the automation, and continuing to add additional automation in the finance field. We've just tapped the surface.

Soi concludes:

“Ultimately from an investment standpoint, we'll be activating all these NetSuite modules that we have and really seeing the value of the automation, and continuing to add additional automation in the finance field. We've just tapped the surface.”