How Vitamin Well Automated EDI to Scale from $0 to an Estimated $650 Million

Introduction

Vitamin Well Group is a global house of brands. It makes functional drinks and protein snacks for everyday life. The company started in Stockholm in 2006. Since then, it has grown into a family of brands that includes Vitamin Well, Barebells, NOCCO, NÅBE, and Tyngre.

Today, Vitamin Well Group runs 14 offices and employs more than 750 people worldwide. It sells in more than 50 markets across Europe, North America, and Asia. In 2025, the company topped SEK 10 billion in revenue. North America has become the group’s biggest growth story. Barebells entered the US in 2019, starting from zero revenue. Today, Barebells is among the top-selling protein bar brands in the country. Vitamin Well now expects $650 million in North America revenue this year. Its brands sell through Trader Joe’s, Walmart, Target, Albertsons, and a long list of regional grocers.

The Challenge

Five years ago, John Connery joined Vitamin Well as an Operations Specialist. He was a team of one. His job was to process every order, shipping notice, and invoice by hand.

Vitamin Well was growing fast. But growth created a new problem. Retailers wanted automated order processing through EDI. EDI is a standard way for retailers and suppliers to exchange orders, invoices, and shipping data electronically. Neither John nor his manager had ever used EDI before.

The turning point came when Vitamin Well wanted to sell into GNC. GNC is a national health and wellness retailer, and it required EDI for every order, invoice, and shipping notice. John’s manager had already agreed to work with SPS Commerce, GNC’s recommended provider, before anyone on the team understood what EDI even meant.

John had to learn fast. He had to figure out how EDI worked. He had to learn how to onboard new trading partners. He also had to understand the difference between web-based order setups and direct file transmissions. Mostly, he learned by doing.

The stakes were high. Vitamin Well needed a way to keep adding retailers without adding a big team behind them. Today, John leads a team of five. Without SPS, he estimates the team would need to be double that size, “at least double digits” by his own count.

The Solution

GNC’s recommendation became Vitamin Well’s foundation. SPS Commerce turned what used to be manual work into an automated system.

Purchase orders, acknowledgements, shipping notices, and invoices now move automatically between Vitamin Well and its retail customers through SPS Fulfillment. The data flows straight into Microsoft Dynamics 365, the company’s ERP system.

That shift matters. John and his team treat their ERP as their single source of truth. Getting order and shipping data to land there automatically, instead of being typed in by hand, keeps that source of truth accurate.

SPS also solved a problem EDI alone couldn’t fix. Some smaller retailers and regional grocers didn’t want to set up EDI. Others didn’t know how. PDF Order Automation through Fulfillment lets Vitamin Well process all orders through one automated workflow using AI-assisted mapping.

With the operational plumbing handled, John’s team shifted its attention. Instead of order entry and onboarding, they now focus on capacity planning and production allocation.

The Results

The results show up in the numbers. Vitamin Well’s North America business grew from zero revenue in 2019 to an estimated $650 million in 2026. The company now processes close to 500 orders a month across major retailers like Trader Joe’s, Walmart, Albertsons, and Target. Vitamin Well has also seen a 5X increase in document volume over the past two years. In January 2024, it was processing roughly 1,000 documents a month; that number now exceeds 5,000.

Growth didn’t stop in the US. When Vitamin Well launched in Canada in 2024, SPS helped the team split Canadian and US orders across separate ERP entities automatically. That groundwork is paying off again this year, as Vitamin Well prepares to launch in Mexico and plans to repeat the same setup.

Automation did more than save time. It cut errors.

“It eliminates the risk for human error.”
— John Connery, Supply Planning Manager, Vitamin Well

By his estimate, moving to SPS cut manual work and error rates by more than 95%.

That reliability builds trust. John has learned to count on the SPS network when something goes wrong. Most retailers Vitamin Well works with already recommend SPS. That means the systems are already mapped out, and the onboarding process is already understood on both sides.

“It is simple, but it is complex. At the end of the day, a lot of the brands like us have the same challenges and issues.”
— John Connery, Supply Planning Manager, Vitamin Well

That shared experience across the SPS network gives brands like Vitamin Well a place to turn when new challenges come up. Chances are, someone else has already solved it.

John’s own path changed too. He moved from processing orders alone to leading Vitamin Well’s Supply Planning team. Now he manages inventory and production allocation instead of chasing daily order entry fires.

Advice from the Inside

John’s five years building Vitamin Well’s EDI foundation taught him a few lessons worth passing on to other operations leaders scaling fast.

1. Automate the basics before you scale. Order entry and accuracy are the first fires to put out. Get that automated early. As volume grows, that will be the least of your concerns. That frees you up to focus on capacity and production planning instead.

2. Specialize your team by account once you outgrow having one person handle everything. Different retailers have different rules, forms, and quirks. At Vitamin Well’s current scale, John recommends assigning team members to specific accounts. That works better than expecting everyone to know every retailer’s nuances.

3. Lean on a network that retailers already trust. Most of Vitamin Well’s retail customers recommended SPS themselves. That meant the systems and onboarding process were already mapped out before Vitamin Well even started.