E-commerce Case Study

E-commerce Case Study

How Farmu drove double-digit increase in revenue and units sold with catalan.ai

How Farmu drove double-digit increase in revenue and units sold with catalan.ai

21.7%

Higher Revenue

Higher

Revenue

17%

Higher Units Sold

Higher

Units Sold

2%

Gross Margin Increase

Gross Margin

Increase

About the company

Farmu is a B2B one-stop shop platform for independent pharmacies in LatAm. They look to increase access to products and services for all the mom-and-pop pharmacies that serve their local communities every day.


About the company

Farmu is a B2B one-stop shop platform for independent pharmacies in LatAm. They look to increase access to products and services for all the mom-and-pop pharmacies that serve their local communities every day.



"We are now able to avoid human errors and optimize pricing with confidence. When you have 2000-3000 SKUs like we do, you are almost guaranteed to be leaving money on the table without a solid pricing strategy. With catalan, we are confident we are leaving less money on the table by optimizing prices with AI.”

Martin Gonzalez
Head of Growth


The Problem


A manual pricing experimentation process with limited variables


At Farmu, pricing strategy is a delicate balance between staying competitive and optimizing profits. Before incorporating catalan into their operations, Farmu faced significant challenges with their manual and fragmented pricing approach. Martin, Farmu’s Head of Growth, explains, "our pricing methodology was centered around Key Value Items (KVIs) and long-tail products. We used KVIs to signal affordability and increased prices in long-tail products to optimize profits. However, benchmarking market prices for our extensive SKU range proved to be a manual and inefficient process, requiring the work of a full-time person."


Pablo, Farmu’s Revenue Analyst, adds, "We lacked the necessary inputs for pricing and struggled to execute our KVIs and long-tail strategies due to data scarcity and manual efforts. Our team spent significant time on the process, resulting in inefficiency and limited competitiveness." Pricing optimization is all about data quantity and quality, and Farmu was not confident that they had enough external market data. Further, the data they were able to access was not always 100% reliable.

Manual price adjustments were carried out monthly, and while experimentation was part of their approach, it was ad hoc and manual, primarily through Google Sheets. They relied heavily on A/B testing to experiment with prices. The team changed the price of a product and analyzed the impact on demand and profit in a few days. After a few iterations, if the net impact was positive, they permanently changed the price of the product. This process lacked standard criteria for choosing which products to test and often led to unexpected changes in demand and profit that left Pablo and his team guessing.


Farmu found catalan through one of its revenue leaders who heard about the company and they decided to run a pilot. They knew they wouldn’t be able to scale using these manual pricing strategies. This became particularly important as Farmu was getting ready to raise a round of financing to continue scaling in Latin America.


The Solution


Dynamic pricing iterations to find the optimal price for every product each day with catalan


The urgency for pricing optimization became evident as other revenue-boosting strategies plateaued. In some months, pricing is the critical factor affecting sales results.


Farmu conducted a 60-day pilot for 70 SKUs across two cities in Colombia with catalan. The platform made 1890 dynamic price changes during the pilot, redistributing prices across Farmu’s product portfolio.


Through a dynamic split-test strategy, pricing strategies alternated between Catalan-Priced Days and Farmu-Priced Days, with each managing pricing for a specific number of days. The approach maintained stability and prevented extreme price fluctuations by establishing minimum and maximum price limits for each SKU. The selection of days for each pricing approach was randomized, mitigating any potential bias.


During the pilot, catalan, on average, decreased prices for 20 SKUs and increased them for 50 SKUs. Both strategies resulted in increased revenue and margins: 16 SKUs saw an increase in revenue with price decreases and 37 SKUs had revenue increase with higher prices. All results were measured after the pilot ended.


Summary of price changes and revenue impact by SKU



Maintaining strong relationships with suppliers, especially in the pharmaceutical sector, is paramount for a B2B marketplace like Farmu. Catalan's pricing guardrails played a vital role in ensuring compliance with price limits imposed by pharmaceutical companies.


Pablo shared, “there is no way we could have changed prices at that speed for so many SKUs. By testing different prices, we uncovered key insights for some products that we had never seen before.”


The Results


Increased revenue and units sold during pilot, gross margin increase post-pilot


After the pilot, Farmu and catalan set out to measure the results and compare key metrics between catalan-Priced Days and Farmu-Priced Days. “catalan-Priced Days in Bogota saw an average revenue increase of 21.7% and a 17% rise in units sold, while in Barranquilla, these days exhibited a 5% revenue increase and an 11% surge in units sold. Nothing else changed during the pilot so, to us, this is clear evidence that catalan can bring top line results by making smart and dynamic price changes” says Pablo.


“The pilot also provided valuable insights into price elasticity, revealing surprising dynamics. For example, it showed that Chapstick's revenue increased by almost 26% with an 18% price hike, while VapoRub oil's revenue soared by 70% with a mere 7% price increase. Elasticity for one of our high-selling products changed drastically, from highly elastic at the beginning of the pilot to highly inelastic towards the end. catalan was able to identify this change and adjust prices accordingly” detailed Pablo.


With these results, Farmu decided to continue using catalan to manage pricing for a portfolio of their key products. “In the first months using catalan post-pilot, we have consistently seen gross margins 2 to 3 percentage points higher for the catalan priced product portfolio compared to our baseline. In a marketplace business, where every peso matters for the bottom line, this is a game-changer,” Pablo explains. Farmu continues to add new products every month to be priced by catalan.


Martin highlights, "We are now able to avoid human errors and optimize pricing with confidence. When you have 2000-3000 SKUs like we do, you are almost guaranteed to be leaving money on the table without a solid pricing strategy. With catalan, we are confident we are leaving less money on the table by optimizing prices with AI. As we scale and seek further investment, the top and bottom line impact that catalan generates is instrumental in presenting compelling numbers to potential investors."



Summary of price changes and revenue impact by SKU



Maintaining strong relationships with suppliers, especially in the pharmaceutical sector, is paramount for a B2B marketplace like Farmu. Catalan's pricing guardrails played a vital role in ensuring compliance with price limits imposed by pharmaceutical companies.


Pablo shared, “there is no way we could have changed prices at that speed for so many SKUs. By testing different prices, we uncovered key insights for some products that we had never seen before.”


The Results


Increased revenue and units sold during pilot, gross margin increase post-pilot


After the pilot, Farmu and catalan set out to measure the results and compare key metrics between catalan-Priced Days and Farmu-Priced Days. “catalan-Priced Days in Bogota saw an average revenue increase of 21.7% and a 17% rise in units sold, while in Barranquilla, these days exhibited a 5% revenue increase and an 11% surge in units sold. Nothing else changed during the pilot so, to us, this is clear evidence that catalan can bring top line results by making smart and dynamic price changes” says Pablo.


“The pilot also provided valuable insights into price elasticity, revealing surprising dynamics. For example, it showed that Chapstick's revenue increased by almost 26% with an 18% price hike, while VapoRub oil's revenue soared by 70% with a mere 7% price increase. Elasticity for one of our high-selling products changed drastically, from highly elastic at the beginning of the pilot to highly inelastic towards the end. catalan was able to identify this change and adjust prices accordingly” detailed Pablo.


With these results, Farmu decided to continue using catalan to manage pricing for a portfolio of their key products. “In the first months using catalan post-pilot, we have consistently seen gross margins 2 to 3 percentage points higher for the catalan priced product portfolio compared to our baseline. In a marketplace business, where every peso matters for the bottom line, this is a game-changer,” Pablo explains. Farmu continues to add new products every month to be priced by catalan.


Martin highlights, "We are now able to avoid human errors and optimize pricing with confidence. When you have 2000-3000 SKUs like we do, you are almost guaranteed to be leaving money on the table without a solid pricing strategy. With catalan, we are confident we are leaving less money on the table by optimizing prices with AI. As we scale and seek further investment, the top and bottom line impact that catalan generates is instrumental in presenting compelling numbers to potential investors."



Request a Demo

Set pricing on

auto-pilot with catalan

Set pricing on

auto-pilot with catalan

Set pricing on

auto-pilot

with catalan



"We are now able to avoid human errors and optimize pricing with confidence. When you have 2000-3000 SKUs like we do, you are almost guaranteed to be leaving money on the table without a solid pricing strategy. With catalan, we are confident we are leaving less money on the table by optimizing prices with AI.”

Martin Gonzalez
Head of Growth


"We are now able to avoid human errors and optimize pricing with confidence. When you have 2000-3000 SKUs like we do, you are almost guaranteed to be leaving money on the table without a solid pricing strategy. With catalan, we are confident we are leaving less money on the table by optimizing prices with AI.”

Martin Gonzalez
Head of Growth