JonnyPops Scales National Retail Distribution with SPS Fulfillment and NetSuite

The Challenge

JonnyPops’ founders started selling frozen pops at farmers markets in 2012. After strong feedback from customers at local pop-ups around the Twin Cities, the team moved into regional grocery stores.

JonnyPops subsequently grew from regional grocery distribution to national distribution with leading retailers, and those retailers required EDI. Reaching large retailers across the country meant order automation was a condition of doing business, and JonnyPops needed a way to receive and process those retailer orders electronically.

The need grew from there. More retailers meant more EDI requirements and more 3PLs to handle the volume, and every additional trading partner added complexity and the risk of chargebacks if requirements were missed. Retailer EDI alone was no longer enough. Orders had to flow straight into NetSuite and on to the 3PLs, because entering them by hand would not keep up.

The Solution

That EDI requirement brought JonnyPops to SPS Commerce, and SPS Fulfillment became the company’s first order automation path. When JonnyPops moved to NetSuite, SPS automated its customer order, shipping, and invoice management directly into its system.

SPS also connected the brand to each of its 3PLs and brought the warehouse to EDI compliance, including the ASNs retailers require. This lets JonnyPops complete its ASNs with confidence and accuracy.

“Onboarding a new warehouse and becoming EDI compliant, especially with ASNs, is a whole other monster. SPS has helped with that a ton.”
— Dillon Barmore, NetSuite System Administrator, JonnyPops

When a retailer or 3PL joins, the SPS project team maps the connection, tests it, and sets the go-live date. Unlike other EDI providers that offer a do-it-yourself onboarding experience, SPS owns the work. Dillon Barmore, JonnyPops’ NetSuite System Administrator, and his team have added trading partners and 3PLs this way. Without SPS, the 3PL relationships would mean people emailing PDFs of orders and hand-picking pallets and cartons from a paper sheet.

MAX, the agentic AI layer in the SPS network, gives Dillon a faster way into his own trading data. Instead of searching through Fulfillment, he asks for a PO, its ASN, or its latest change order in plain language and gets the answer in one step.

The Results

System automation with Fulfillment removes much of the manual work between JonnyPops trading partners. This keeps JonnyPops in sync with its retailers, so it can respond early and keep pace with growth. Without this, Dillon estimates order entry would be insurmountable.

Within about an hour of the JonnyPops team approving an order, it sits in the 3PL’s warehouse system, ready to pick, and the shipment returns automatically to NetSuite. Dillon estimates that work would otherwise take two full-time people.

“If we did not have system automation with NetSuite with order fulfillment data from our 3PL coming back into our ERP with Lot # tracking, it would be hours of manual labor per day.”
— Dillon Barmore, NetSuite System Administrator, JonnyPops

With order data moving through one connection, the JonnyPops team spends less time on phone calls and email chains, and nothing gets lost in translation. The team also has visibility into all documents flowing in and out of Fulfillment, so they can easily catch any stuck orders before the truck is due.

MAX makes JonnyPops’ data in the network conversational. This allows Dillon to focus his time on other priorities as the business continues to scale.

“Orders flowing from SPS into NetSuite on their own allow us to focus on growth.”
— Dillon Barmore, NetSuite System Administrator, JonnyPops

By building a strong operational foundation, JonnyPops has freed its team to focus on scaling the business.

Lessons Learned

Three lessons from JonnyPops stand out for operations and IT leaders at growing brands.

1. Partner with a provider that owns the integration. EDI integration is an IT project. Have an EDI provider like SPS that owns and operates it so you don’t have to. That expertise has kept dozens of retailers and 3PL connections for JonnyPops running efficiently and left the team free to focus on growth.
2. Check your error reporting daily. JonnyPops reviews errors by customer and by document, because an order that misses a tight ship window or an ASN that fails compliance costs more to fix after the fact than to catch up front.
3. Aim for zero touches across every order channel. Try to get orders into your system without anyone retyping or checking them, whether they come in through EDI or email. Once the routine work is automated, choose where people’s attention is most valuable.