Built to Grow: Big Kahuna Fundraising’s Commerce Transformation

OVERVIEW

Big Kahuna Fundraising provides fundraising programs to schools across Texas, Oklahoma, and Colorado. Rapid revenue growth strained their legacy infrastructure, prompting the team to replatform their website and replace warehouse and fulfillment systems.  

THE PROBLEM

Big Kahuna required significant customization for both its back-office operations and online experience. Every order needed to be linked to a specific school and student, and inventory options had to vary by delivery location. 

THE SOLUTION 

Big Kahuna chose Virid to implement their Shopify site based on Virid’s record delivering high-performing commerce websites that incorporate the latest industry best practices for usability and technology, as well as providing the complex system integrations that achieve back-office accuracy and efficiency.  

Key capabilities include:  

• Reporting & Communications – Multi-level reporting for school administrators, teachers, and families, with sales tracking at the classroom, grade, and individual level.  

• Flexible Delivery Options – Schools and families can choose between school delivery, direct-to-home, or student preference – with product availability adjusting accordingly.  

• Student Tracking – Shoppers can search for and link purchases to a specific student, with the ability to switch students at any point. Virid ensured that the correct student is linked throughout the shipping process using unique identifiers.  

• Rewards Management – Each reward has complex business rules that apply differently to individuals and families, and the solution is now customizable for each fundraising event.   

THE IMPACT

Virid was initially asked to build the Shopify Plus website as well as the custom integration to the third-party warehouse management system. When the scope of the account management and reporting functionality grew beyond what their new third party wanted to support, Virid stepped in to fill the gap. Constructing a custom client relationship management (CRM) system for Big Kahuna and its stakeholders creates an improved user experience on both the front and back end. Additionally, different users have access to features and information specific to their role or relationship to the fundraiser.   

Virid migrated the Big Kahuna site to a new online store built on the Shopify Plus platform, assisted Big Kahuna in selecting third-party applications, developed custom applications where necessary, and performed the required integrations. The UX of the website was vastly improved with easy product search and filtering, product cross-sells, and enhanced product categorization.  Team operations were simplified, and fundraiser management for schools was brought online for the first time.    

The result is an easy-to-shop user experience, data and operational efficiencies across the order management and fulfillment operations, and a cost-efficient total cost of ownership that combine to satisfy the needs of an enterprise-level online business.