The power behind Factor Bikes’ B2C breakthrough

About Factor Bikes

Factor Bikes is a high-end luxury bicycle brand committed to precision engineering and innovative design. Founder Rob Gitelis, a former World Tour professional cyclist from the 1990s, is a pioneer in carbon fiber technology within the bicycle manufacturing sector. Established in 2016, Factor made an immediate competitive impact, signing a pro team within nine months, securing a stage victory in its debut Tour de France, and welcoming four-time Tour de France champion Chris Froome to join as a co-owner in 2021.

Operating under the motto Never. Status. Quo., Factor embodies the core values of Engineer, Design, and Evolve, insisting on complete control from research and development to manufacturing. Its comprehensive product line, including Road, Gravel, Mountain, Time Trial, and Track models—caters to both competitive riders and premium clientele. Factor’s ultimate vision is to not only lead in the competitive racing arena but also to become a cultural leader that transcends the sport of cycling itself.

Challenge

During the COVID-19 pandemic, shifting consumer behavior prompted Factor to expand from its initial B2B offline supply model to establishing a global B2C e-commerce business using Shopify. The influx of B2C orders from around the world fueled rapid revenue growth and expanded Factor’s business reach from Asia into North America and Europe.

However, as the business quickly scaled, Barkley Chang, Factor’s CFO, identified two significant challenges: the surge in B2C order volume and the massive number of SKUs. While their existing ERP system offered processing capability, the high volume of orders still required manual entry. In addition, managing the increasingly complex SKU catalog was time-consuming and labor-intensive, often requiring cross-time-zone collaboration among the team.

Solution

To transition from short-term fixes to a scalable, multi-platform collaboration architecture, Factor engaged RSM Hong Kong in 2023 to thoroughly understand the company’s standard operating procedures (SOPs) and SKU naming conventions. This initiative aimed to both optimize NetSuite’s operational settings and prepare the groundwork for multi-platform Integration.

After reviewing RSM Hong Kong’s analysis of several iPaaS solutions and considering both current and future business needs, Factor selected Celigo as its integration foundation because it offered a single, easy-to-use, and monitorable platform for standardization and business process automation.

Factor operates with a lean internal IT team, and Celigo provides a low-code environment that supports both technical and business users. This flexibility allows business managers to make minor workflow adjustments, while technical staff focus on handling more complex scenarios. Celigo’s prebuilt integration solutions enable rapid delivery by partners such as RSM Hong Kong. In addition, its automated error self-healing capabilities help reduce Factor’s operational costs.

Results

Today, the Shopify e-commerce layer from Factor’s headless store page is seamlessly connected to the core ERP business processes via Celigo, establishing a clear order and fulfillment architecture robust enough for future expansion into new regions and channels.

By establishing a robust integration architecture on Celigo, Factor successfully transitioned from passively reacting to market shifts to proactively expanding its global footprint into the B2C space.

As Abby Kung, Supply Chain & Procurement, said “The true value of this integration is the operational agility it provides. We now have a reliable backbone that frees up our talent to focus purely on strategic growth and delivering a world-class experience.”

Celigo has delivered measurable results, empowering Factor to meet the high expectations of its premium clientele. With Celigo, Factor Bikes:

• Reduced fulfillment to near-real-time: Order processing time was dramatically reduced from up to 24 hours to just 5-10 minutes for verification, achieving an efficiency improvement of over 95%.
• Expanded to 24/7 global operations: Elimination of time-zone delays ensures continuous processing and a faster experience for customers worldwide.
• Empowered a lean team: The low-code environment achieved complex multi-platform integration without adding IT headcount, while ensuring high data accuracy and eliminating manual errors.

With a scalable integration strategy in place, Factor is preparing for its next phase of growth. The next step for Factor Bikes is integrating B2B operations, automating key processes like invoicing, customer service, and warranty management, and infusing more AI into core workflows to strengthen its market position.