Spreading like wildfire: How B2B BNPL helps Fire Label to drive customer growth and expand globally

• Clothing wholesaler Fire Label wanted to offer credit but couldn’t take on the associated risk.
• An introduction to Hokodo was the spark that led them to discover B2B Buy Now, Pay Later (BNPL).
• With access to credit, customers are spending more and returning more frequently.

“We would recommend Hokodo to any other businesses that want to grow and retain their B2B customer base!” - Sam Turner, Sales Director, Fire Label

Meet Fire Label

Fire Label is an online wholesaler of plain garments and accessories including activewear, T-shirts, bags, headwear and more to distributors. The business is focused on offering a B2C-like experience – including outstanding customer service and fast delivery – in the world of wholesale.

Sam Turner is the Sales Director of Fire Label and works very closely with the customer service, marketing and development teams to drive online sales for the business.

Playing with Fire

Everyone needs clothes, right? Given their broad inventory, Fire Label sells into a variety of industries. In many of these sectors, business buyers expect to be offered payment terms.

“This wasn’t something that we were able to offer,” explains Sam. “Following the pandemic we felt that the risk of offering uninsured credit to customers outweighed the reward. As we sell to a number of large companies the uninsured credit limits could have become quite substantial.”

Despite this, Sam and the team knew that if they could overcome this challenge, they would gain access to an opportunity for huge growth. In addition to securing loyalty from existing customers, a trade credit facility would drive new business.

Igniting the Spark

So, the search was on for a partner who could help facilitate a trade credit offering. At first, the team investigated the use of Klarna, however they quickly realised that a B2C BNPL offering wouldn’t be optimised for the higher order value, complex purchasing processes and risk factors of B2B.

That’s when they discovered Hokodo.

“The fact that Hokodo was specifically built for B2B was a major factor for us,” Sam tells us. “Also, the set up seemed very professional and well structured from the initial contact we had.”

Once Fire Label had chosen to partner with Hokodo, we worked closely to integrate B2B Buy Now, Pay Later into the checkout process. Fire Label has a bespoke website and CRM, so their developers utilised Hokodo’s APIs in order to integrate. Regular meetings between the two teams meant that the process ran smoothly, any issues were overcome efficiently and the integration was completed in four weeks.

“The integration was a good experience,” Sam says. “The Hokodo team was very professional and well organised.”

Fanning the Flames

By implementing Hokodo’s solution, Fire Label has enabled their customers to access the payment terms required to improve their cash flow. 

“This in turn has increased the average order size from these customers,” explains Sam when asked about the benefits that B2B BNPL has brought to his business so far. “It has also increased how regularly these customers order from us.”

Hokodo’s APIs enable the Fire Label team to see order updates in their merchant dashboard, which Sam describes as a “really handy tool” for the salespeople. When the team has an issue or wants to tweak their solution, Hokodo is on hand to help.

“We have given regular feedback to Hokodo during our catch up meetings, all of which has been taken on board and implemented.”

Spreading Like Wildfire

With a solid foundation in place and a close-knit relationship between our teams, the partnership between Hokodo and Fire Label is only set to grow.

Being able to offer trade credit via a pan-European B2B BNPL provider means that Fire Label is now also able to proactively target customer acquisition in new geographic markets.

“The whole experience has been a very positive one for us,” Sam adds. “We would recommend Hokodo to any other businesses that want to grow and retain their B2B customer base!”

This is one fire that we don’t want to extinguish.

Want to find out how Hokodo can help you to increase average order value, boost order frequency and drive customer acquisition? Book a call today.