Blue Vanilla is a contemporary womenswear brand known for accessible, on-trend fashion. Alongside its sister brand Pink Vanilla, the business sells across a growing network of online marketplaces. As that network expanded, so did the patchwork of apps and integrations required to keep everything running — each marketplace with its own tooling, its own rules, and its own demands on the team.
In February 2025, Blue Vanilla turned to Scalably to replace that complexity with a single managed service. In just over a year, the partnership has delivered:
- Expansion from a handful of marketplaces to seven, without adding headcount
- A shift in team focus from technical firefighting to merchandising and growth
- Doubled performance across marketplaces year on year
This blog post explores how Blue Vanilla and Pink Vanilla consolidated their marketplace operations with Scalably and the results that followed.
Challenge
Like many growing brands, Blue Vanilla had built up its marketplace presence one marketplace at a time. Each new marketplace came with its own integration app, its own set of rules for product data, and its own way of handling stock and orders. The result was a tangle of disparate tools that required constant attention from the eCommerce team.
Managing product onboarding, data formatting, and technical issues across multiple platforms was consuming time that would have been far better spent on merchandising and growing the business. With each new marketplace, the operational burden only increased.
When the time came to review resourcing, Blue Vanilla’s Head of eCommerce saw an opportunity. Rather than replace a departing marketplace manager, he ran an experiment: could Scalably’s managed service absorb that workload entirely?
“We wanted to see whether Scalably could handle the complexity of all the different rules across our marketplaces so the team could focus on what actually drives revenue — merchandising and getting the right products in front of customers.”
Solutions
Scalably replaced Blue Vanilla’s patchwork of marketplace apps with a single, managed integration platform. Rather than the team navigating different tools and workflows for each marketplace, Scalably handles the complexity behind the scenes — product data mapping, marketplace-specific rules, stock synchronisation, and order flows all managed in one place.
With the technical burden lifted, the eCommerce team was free to concentrate on merchandising: curating the right product mix, optimising listings, and making commercial decisions that drive growth. Product onboarding became faster and more reliable, with enhanced data quality ensuring listings met each marketplace’s standards first time.
The experiment of not replacing the marketplace manager proved successful — and then some. What started as a trial quickly became the permanent operating model, with Blue Vanilla expanding from a handful of marketplaces to seven, all managed through Scalably.
Critically, the move to Scalably also meant simpler day-to-day operations. When something needs attention, support requests are picked up rapidly by people who actually know the business — not passed between anonymous agents.
Because Scalably builds and maintains its own marketplace integrations, Blue Vanilla has been able to explore opportunities that aren’t yet available through other integrators. Rather than waiting for off-the-shelf connectors to catch up, new marketplaces can be brought online as soon as the commercial opportunity is there.
“It’s not just the technology. When we need something, we call and it gets sorted. That kind of support makes a real difference when you’re running lean.”
Partnership
What makes the relationship work is that it goes beyond a typical vendor arrangement. Scalably and Blue Vanilla operate as genuine partners — consulting each other, sharing insight, and finding ways to support each other’s growth. The teams speak regularly, and both sides actively look for ways to create value for the other.
“We love working with Blue Vanilla — everything we do is win-win, supporting each other. We get great advice and marketplace opportunities enabling us to deliver effective solutions that unlock value for the both of us.”
Chris Lowe, Scalably
Results
The impact of consolidating onto Scalably has been felt across the business.
With faster onboarding and improved data quality, Blue Vanilla was able to get a broader product mix online across all marketplaces. Better merchandising — made possible by freeing the team from technical overhead — translated directly into commercial results.
Pink Vanilla’s performance over Black Friday saw 100% year-on-year growth, a direct reflection of having the right products, with the right data, available at the right time. Across both brands and all marketplaces, the shift to getting all stock online with enhanced listings doubled overall performance over the year.
Beyond revenue, the savings have been significant. Removing the need for a dedicated marketplace manager and eliminating the costs of multiple disparate apps delivered meaningful reductions in both headcount and platform charges.
Seven marketplaces, two brands, no additional headcount — and a team that now spends its time on the work that matters most.
“Scalably gave us the confidence to scale without scaling the team. The results speak for themselves — we’ve doubled our performance and the team is focused on growth, not troubleshooting integrations.”
