From Spreadsheets to Scalable Fulfillment

The Challenge

The company ran on Magento for years. And for years, it worked well enough. But behind the scenes, a familiar problem was compounding. Multiple development teams had worked on the Magento site over the years, and not all of them were good. Mistakes were built on mistakes in the code. When modules updated or new versions of Magento were released, features that had been working would break. The team was spending more time fighting their own system than running their business.

But the bigger problem wasn’t the website. It was the warehouse. Pleasant Hill Grain had never had a warehouse management system. Product locations lived in employees’ heads. Order status was tracked through a patchwork of manual processes. Inventory counts didn’t match between the system and the shelf. And when COVID hit in 2020, sending order volumes through the roof as customers stocked up on home baking and cooking equipment, the team had to build emergency spreadsheets just to keep track of what was going where.

They survived it. Sales in 2020 and 2021 were the best years in company history. But everyone knew the infrastructure wouldn’t hold if it happened again.

“Mistakes were built on mistakes in the code. Future development teams said it can’t really be fixed. Somebody from your team called it spaghetti. We knew we couldn’t keep going with that because so many features we had set up weren’t working anymore.”

LO Laurel OlsonCo-owner, Pleasant Hill Grain

Why SkuNexus

The decision to move to Shopware for the storefront and SkuNexus for warehouse and order management came down to trust. Pleasant Hill Grain had worked with the Web Solutions NYC team before on their Magento site, and the quality of work and communication stood out compared to every other agency they’d used.

Shopware was a gamble — new to the U.S. market with limited reviews available. But the team’s recommendation, backed by the European track record, gave Jesse and Laurel enough confidence to move forward. The SkuNexus decision was more straightforward: they needed a real WMS for the first time in the company’s history, and they needed it to integrate seamlessly with whatever storefront platform they chose.

“We trusted your word, Yitz. And from our experience working with you and being true to your word, that was a big reason that we decided to do this.”

JR Jesse ReedCo-owner, Pleasant Hill Grain

The Implementation

The migration was a full-stack project: new storefront on Shopware, new WMS and OMS on SkuNexus, new hosting infrastructure on JetRails. The team managed the transition without a single day of meaningful downtime and without a single customer complaint about the change.

First Real WMS

For a company that had always relied on tribal knowledge to locate products and track orders, implementing SkuNexus was a fundamental shift. For the first time, every product has a tracked location in the warehouse. Every order has a visible status. The customer service team can see exactly what stage an order is at in the fulfillment process and where a specific product sits physically in the building.

Automated Fulfillment Workflows

Wave picking replaced the manual processes that had buckled under COVID-era volume. Orders are grouped, pick paths are optimized, and the warehouse team moves through fulfillment systematically instead of reacting to orders one at a time.

Seamless Shopware Integration

The SkuNexus–Shopware connection provides 360-degree automation: orders flow from the storefront into SkuNexus automatically, inventory syncs in real time, and tracking information pushes back to the customer without manual intervention. The integration extends to their expanding marketplace presence — with 900+ new eBay listings live through Channable and Amazon integration on the horizon, SkuNexus serves as the central fulfillment hub across all channels.

Zero-Disruption Migration

The transition from Magento to the new Shopware + SkuNexus stack happened without disrupting business operations. Customers didn’t notice the change, which is exactly the point.

“Having a WMS was a big step for us. All the stuff’s within the system now, which means we don’t have to rely on people’s brains and memories as much. And the idea of adding new employees — it just seems easier now.”

JR Jesse ReedCo-owner, Pleasant Hill Grain

The Results

Pleasant Hill Grain is honest about where they are: they’re still growing into the full capabilities of SkuNexus. They haven’t fully deployed barcode scanning across every product location. They’re still onboarding warehouse staff to new workflows. And they’re the first to say they’re not using the platform to its full capacity yet.

That honesty is part of the story. This isn’t a company that flipped a switch and declared victory. It’s a company that built real infrastructure for the first time and is methodically expanding what they do with it.

Warehouse visibility exists for the first time. Product locations, order status, fulfillment progress — all visible to every team member who needs it.

New employee onboarding is fundamentally easier. Institutional knowledge is in the system now, not locked in the heads of long-tenured staff.

Marketplace expansion is happening. 900+ new eBay listings went live through Channable, with Amazon next. SkuNexus handles the order flow regardless of which channel the sale comes through.

Returns appear to be declining. The returns processing area of the warehouse has been noticeably emptier.

Sales are tracking against the best years in company history. Performance compared favorably to the COVID-driven peaks of 2020 and 2021, despite the absence of a global stay-at-home catalyst.

They’re ready for a surge. If orders increased 100%, the team believes they’d be prepared to handle it. That’s a statement they couldn’t have made two years ago.

“I think with Shopware and SkuNexus, they allow us to be flexible, to add products quickly, to handle increased demand, to deal with backorder situations where we’re out of stock for months and keep track of those orders. I think we’re set up well with the software we have.”

JR Jesse ReedCo-owner, Pleasant Hill Grain

The Partnership

Pleasant Hill Grain doesn’t set revenue targets or five-year growth plans. They’re a family business that focuses on delivering excellent products and excellent service every day and seeing where it goes. That philosophy has built a business with fanatical customer loyalty, multilingual support staff, and the kind of product knowledge that turns first-time buyers into lifelong customers.

What they needed from a technology partner was the same thing: steady, reliable, honest. Kuba and the SkuNexus team have delivered that.

For SkuNexus prospects evaluating whether the platform works for a family-run operation that isn’t trying to become the next Amazon, Pleasant Hill Grain is the answer. You don’t need to be shipping 500,000 units a year to benefit from real warehouse management. You need to be at the point where spreadsheets and tribal knowledge aren’t enough anymore.

“If you’re looking for an answer about our overall business goals — like, how much do we want to grow in the next year, 10 years — we’ve never had goals like that. We probably never will. That’s just not who we are. We’re just trying to run the business well every day and see where it goes.”

LO Laurel OlsonCo-owner, Pleasant Hill Grain