Elevating Success: How Odoo Empowered Elevated Trading to Thrive in a Booming Industry

Location/Region: Dallas, TX
Industry: Wholesale/Hemp
Apps implemented: Accounting, Sales, CRM, Inventory, Manufacturing, Purchase, Project, Documents, Email Marketing, Sign, Website, Direct Print, Barcode
Software Replaced: Quickbooks, Google Sheets, Hubspot, Order Circle
Number of users: 11
Company size: 15
Hosting type: Odoo.sh

The hemp industry has been booming in the past few years, especially following the 2018 Farm Bill, which marked the federal legalization of hemp. As demand for hemp products skyrocketed, so did the establishment of companies that produce, distribute, and sell hemp-related products. One such company is Elevated Trading.

Elevated Trading, based in Dallas, Texas, is a wholesale hemp company that bridges the gap between farmers and retailers. With a newly emerging industry, many of these farms grew amazing products but had trouble properly and successfully bringing those products to market. When hemp became federally legal and compliant, co-founders and brothers Cody and Justin Sandone saw a problem they knew they could solve. Recognizing an opportunity to start a business within this space, Cody and Justin founded Elevated Trading in January 2020 to elevate the hemp supply chain and bring a level of professionalism to the space. Today, the company supplies bulk products for companies that want to package and brand their products themselves and offers private label services to help customers. In this way, Elevated Trading does a lot of brand development for companies and provides packaging services that a customer may need.

With four years of business under its belt in a quickly growing industry, Elevated Trading needed a comprehensive business solution that could keep up with its changing needs. Odoo, it turns out, was the perfect fit.

Prior to using Odoo, Elevated Trading managed its business needs using a combination of Quickbooks Online for accounting, Google Sheets for inventory, Hubspot for CRM, and Order Circle. Cody Sandone, co-founder and CEO of Elevated Trading, explains that this piecemeal approach worked as well as one would expect - that is, not very well at all:

We had data everywhere. We weren't able to have a single pane of glass into some of the key metrics of the business. We had a lot of frustrations. There were data discrepancies between our wholesale ordering platform and the push into Quickbooks oftentimes. There were just a lot of inoperability issues that we were trying to solve by coming into a single software solution.

In addition to a lack of insight into the company’s data and a lack of communication amongst business functions, Cody explains that Elevated Trading’s future plans played a big role in its decision to find a new software system. The company wanted to start packaging and performing some manufacturing functions in addition to its existing workflows, and the four different platforms it was using at the time didn’t offer this capability.

When Elevated Trading began exploring alternative solutions, Cody says that Odoo stood out for two reasons: its price point and its manufacturing capabilities. Odoo’s bill of materials functionality, as well as the granularity it could provide the company with its packaging and private label services, pushed Odoo above its competitors. Furthermore, Cody liked that Odoo offered one flat rate with access to the entire suite of modules that the software offers. He saw this as a huge plus because Elevated Trading could grow with Odoo over the years as the company continued to expand its operations.

Elevated Trading went live with Odoo in May 2023, three months after purchasing the software. Now over a year into its journey using Odoo, Cody says that perhaps the most impactful thing that Odoo has provided his company is having everything within the system linked to Accounting. Having information communicated across applications and accessible in related workflows has been important for the business. For example, he says that inventory moves and changes are quickly reflected on the accounting side. This allows Cody to track costs, run reports on what the company is spending, and monitor inventory turnover.

Since the business didn’t have any manufacturing capabilities in its prior system, Odoo’s Manufacturing application has been extremely important for Elevated Trading’s newer lines of business. Cody explains that Odoo’s manufacturing orders, ability to track bills of materials and costing, and the ease of setting up multiple warehouses have been a huge value addition. Furthermore, Odoo’s high level of customizability has been helpful for Elevated Trading when it comes to tailoring workflows specifically to the hemp industry. This flexibility is especially important within a newer, booming industry.

It’s made our entire business more efficient.

As Elevated Trading continues to work tirelessly to bridge the gap between hemp farmers and retailers in the space, it now has the support to keep growing, knowing that Odoo is a promising long-haul partner in its business operations.

  Start now - It's free     Schedule a demo