Young Specialties was founded in 1986 by a hygienist who saw the challenges that her orthodontic patients had maintaining good hygiene. She could not find a fitting solution for her patients, so she created one. Thirty years later, her design remains one of the market-leading dual-head toothbrushes.
Young Specialties has expanded their offering to include orthodontic supplies, practice-branded personalized toothbrushes and thousands of other products that help orthodontists, pediatric dentists and general practitioners improve the patient experience, bolster their marketing efforts and support at-home care for patients.
Like other B2B industries, there is consolidation and acquisition happening within Young Specialties’s customer base. There are somewhere around 130,000 dental offices, but large organizations are starting to acquire them. Professional buyers from large organizations generally don’t want to deal with rep phone calls and would prefer web-based solutions.
Recognizing the changing nature of the industry and the evolving needs of their buyers, Young Specialties ventured on a journey of digital transformation. They needed to give practitioners simpler ways to buy online. The journey started with a legacy eCommerce system that Young Specialties eventually outgrew.
Scott Leece
VP Business Process Optimization, Plak Smacker
Young Specialties’s initial eCommerce system was not easy to manage, which held them back from making changes to better serve their customers. They were not able to manage it internally. Every change required relying an external consultant, which was not ideal for their growing business.
Making matters more difficult, the original platform wasn’t integrated with Young Specialties’s ERP. Siloed systems meant misaligned pricing and time consuming, manual order entry.
One of Young Specialties’s most popular categories of products is their customizable branded toothbrushes. Selling this product required numerous touchpoints from employees in sales, customer service and operations in order to complete orders, which was a less than ideal situation.
After identifying pain points across their legacy eCommerce system, Young Specialties was ready to make an investment in a more sophisticated solution. As a supplier of numerous B2B products, they needed a solution that understood their complex business and seamlessly integrated with their ERP.
Optimizely B2B Commerce Cloud provided Young Specialties the ability to:
After launching Optimizely B2B Commerce Cloud, Young Specialties’s team and buyers were better enabled to do their jobs. Today, the team can easily make changes to the platform and buyers are satisfied with online purchasing options. Young Specialties’s goal is to double their revenue online. Young Specialties is working to make the website more integrated into their sales and lead generation process.
Since Young Specialties drives growth via acquisition, the eCommerce solution had to be flexible enough to accommodate growth. With Optimizely B2B Commerce Cloud, Young Specialties is positioned for the future.
Manufacturing and distribution