How Cocolab Opened a New Sales Channel Without Changing Their Stack
Industry: Health and Wellness
Category: Dental Care
Company: Cocolab
Segment: Mid-Market
The Challenge: Small Orders, Manual Translation
Cocolab wanted to sell into Dental Service Organizations (DSOs) nationwide. The opportunity was massive, but the operational math did not make sense.
DSOs operate inside their own procurement systems. They will not place orders through Cocolab’s Shopify store. Instead, they send structured purchase orders via email, which vendors must manually click through and process.
Each DSO purchase order required someone on the operations team to:
Open the email
Review the PDF
Manually type SKUs and quantities into Shopify Plus
Confirm pricing and shipping
Sync order into ERP, WMS and shipping tool
Each order took about 5-10 minutes to enter across the order lifecycle. The average order value per clinic was around $100.
That meant the cost of labor just to create the order before fulfillment, COGS or shipping. A small order required the same handling time as a much larger wholesale PO.
“We wanted to sell to DSOs, but retyping every order into Shopify or Netsuite will create too much friction for the team,” - Chris Spratt, CFO
The issue was not demand. It was manual translation between systems.
The Solution: Eliminate the Human Bridge
Cocolab partnered with Buddy to automate the gap between incoming DSO POs and their internal stack.
Standard process: DSO system → Human → Shopify Plus/ERP
New process: DSO system → Buddy → Shopify Plus/ERP
Buddy automatically:
Parsed purchase orders from Gmail
Structured SKUs and quantities
Created the order directly inside Shopify Plus
The team would then review the order before pushing it into Netsuite. Manual data entry was removed.
The Result: From 10 Minutes to 1
Before Buddy:
~5-10 minutes per order
Manual SKU entry
Channel felt inefficient
After Buddy:
<1 minute review and approval
No retyping
Clean system sync
By reducing handling time by 80 percent, Cocolab made $100 orders economically viable.
“We no longer had to debate whether small DSO orders were worth the effort. The team would just review and approve.” - Chris Spratt, CFO
The Outcome: Sales Expansion Without Operational Drag
Cocolab did not change their stack nor add headcount. They also did not require DSOs to adapt to their systems.
With Buddy, that shift turned an operationally unattractive channel into one they could confidently pursue.
Sometimes growth is not blocked by demand. It is blocked by manual entry between systems.
