Without partners helping me, like Reloadify, I never would have succeeded.

Scenery workshop, small yet very big at the same time.

Have you ever heard about Scenery Workshop run by Patrick van der Heijden? Scenery workshop offers differing brushes, paints and other small parts to build small models. There’s a reason why Scenery Workshop is by far the biggest player in this market. With small paints, brushes and small pieces of sand it’s possible to recreate an entire scene. How is it possible for something so small to grow into something gigantic? That’s what we asked webshop owner Patrick van der Heijden.

Patrick started in 2011 with his webshop but he has always worked in the e-commerce industry. Though he started his career in the wholesale industry. Eventually he started a wholesaler in hobby products think about, making maps, stamps, scrapbooks and so on. He enjoyed it very much but besides work you also have a hobby naturally. Coincidentally Patrick was making miniature models. While shopping for his hobby, he noticed that there was only a small handful of things available online if he wanted to buy something and that any order made would take about five or six weeks to ship. That’s a long time to wait. 

I’m fixing this myself

With the experience he had built up in e-commerce, he thought to himself: ‘You know what, I’m just going to try it!’. Before he started this, he first wrote a concrete business plan. Because: what are you actually going to sell to whom? Eventually there was a business plan and it was just going. And that was actually the beginning of a very big success. Patrick does add: ‘without my partner and other partners around me, I would never have succeeded. May that be clear.”

From a small attic room to a fulfillment center.

The beautiful part of this story is that Patrick started the webshop together with his partner, Rutger, and grew his shop naturally. Of course they started small: in the attic they had a rack with some paints, dozens of brushes, some grass and some sand. And it worked! For the first three years. But, like every successful webshop you have to grow with demand. The demand grew and grew and the little attic wasn’t big enough for the storage. So they started to search for a new house with the stipulation that it either had a big attic or a big cellar for the storage of all the products from Scenery Workshop. Eventually they got a house with a big attic. It fixed the issues but the webshop grew too much and a year later he once again lacked space. To just get rid of the issues he started to look for a long term solution. And now he’s been working with a fulfillment center for 5 years, which does the logistics for him. Patrick does have to admit: while he might be the driving force behind the webshop, he did always do it together with his partner. When everything used to be at his home, his partner used to be busy with collecting, packing and sending parcels. Patrick:’Eventually it just became an impossible task. At 18:00 you’re eating dinner and at 18:30 you’re packing parcels and around midnight you’re finally done. It just became too much’. Nowadays Patrick works with Monta Packing, a very fruitful partnership for him.

Today the webshop is still growing exponentially every year. ‘ Without all the help that I got this wouldn’t have been possible’ Patrick explains. Besides his gigantic webshop, Patrick is still working a full-time job. Sitting still? No, that’s not for him. He just gets energy from being busy with so many different things. And his current employer? Nothing but encouragement for Patrick to do his thing.

Because they are a webshop, Patrick finds it important to also be visible in real life. So the goal is to join an event each year. In 2022 you could find Scenery Workshop at the World Model Expo in Eindhoven.

Retention is key

The great part about Scenery Workshop is that they serve a very nice market. His customers know exactly what they need to build a beautiful model. Which is handy because they barely have any returns. Patrick decided early on to only sell utensils like brushes or paint. Because these run out at some point or they need to be replaced. That’s where you get your repeat customers. For the actual models (tanks, figurines or planes) you don’t have to go to Scenery Workshop. They purely sell the tools to dress the models and make the ‘scene’ around the models. What’s popular in models changes very quickly. New models are released constantly and usually if you haven’t sold the old models you’re stuck with them. ‘With all the time and energy available to me, I have to make decisions on what I sell. And models are the first ones to go in that case.” explains Patrick. Besides, it’s clearly not necessary. The retention is very high at Scenery Workshop. ‘People like to come back to my webshop.’

Using email marketing to grow as well.

With the approach that the webshop kept growing, email marketing became a subject that couldn’t be avoided. Patrick: ‘Really I just started with Mailchimp. This is a well known, big player and was easy to use. It worked in the beginning, because you don’t have that many wishes and requirements. But at a certain point I wanted to take the extra step and it became clear that Mailchimp just couldn’t offer the things that I wanted to do with email marketing. At one point emails were sent to the customer from five different places. So when a customer of mine unsubscribed from one place, it could happen that he still received an email from a different place. As you can guess: it caused a lot of issues. So I went looking for something different, something that allowed for more.’ Patrick’s main concern was the integration with the systems that he used: Every system needed to be able to communicate with one another. So the step to switch to Reloadify was quickly decided: the connection with Lightspeed works flawlessly. Everything that you can expect from email marketing.

Reloadify is exactly what I need!

When Patrick got started with Reloadify, he decided to do the email marketing himself. The contact that he has with his customers is very valuable to him. The least he wanted to do is put out a newsletter every month. But finding the time to actually make it, that was the next challenge. And also the question: Do you want to handle everything yourself? Partner ON. Digital marketing soon came into play. ON. Digital initially picked up Google advertising for Scenery workshop. So together with ON. Digital they decided to expand. Currently they’re working on social advertising for Scenery Workshop. The idea came from ON. Digital: ‘“There are opportunities here, Patrick! Let’s give it a go.’ At this stage ON. Digital has also taken over the entirety of email marketing. Keyword being ‘Retention’. With the dozens of triggers that are on in Reloadify, the profits are rolling in. Not only retention emails, such as promoting cross- and upsell, but also lifehacks are shared in the Scenery Workshops emails. From creating your own landscape to the cleaning of your brushes: Patrick wants to offer every customer the best experience when it comes to creating landscapes. Are his customers waiting for these tips? Oh, absolutely! Patrick: ’We’re working at the moment with artificial intelligence to make recommendations to customers based on smart technology and, for example, to optimize our search bar’. In this way, the Scenery Workshop webshop becomes even better and it is possible to determine exactly what the customer needs on the basis of big data. With Reloadify included, that big data can easily be translated into our emails.

‘Without all of the partners working with me, this never would have happened’, says Patrick. ‘I have Optiply for procurement, ON. Digital for online marketing, Monta Packing for logistics and Reloadify for email marketing.’ Patrick could do a lot of these things himself, but really he doesn’t have the time for that. And some things you just want to hand over. For example, a conscious choice was made not to employ any staff. ‘Imagine having someone working for you in your warehouse to pick orders and they get sick. Then I have a problem.’ Outsourcing all of this to Monta Packing might cost quite a bit, but it does also give me the guarantee that I can build on something. You have to make decisions on what you want exactly. But: Patrick is at least satisfied with how things are going and gets energy from it. And ultimately that’s what is most important.