LifeStraw doesn’t sell a commodity.
But what truly sets LifeStraw apart isn't just filtration performance — it's heritage.
"Our roots are in public health," says Aaron Cupps, National Account Manager for Outdoor at LifeStraw. "and that mission still drives how we approach the business today."
LifeStraw products are technical. Use cases matter. Education matters. The brand story matters. Retailers need more than a SKU and a price sheet. They need the confidence to translate LifeStraw’s mission and product innovation to the customer standing in front of them.
“We have a technical product with an important mission behind it,” Cupps explains. “That story matters to our dealers, and we have to make sure it’s communicated clearly.”
As LifeStraw grew, it became clear their wholesale tools needed to support that clarity rather than complicate it.
Orders came in through paper forms, carbon copies, and photos taken by reps and emailed to the team. Data was transposed into spreadsheets. Inventory had to be checked manually. Updating an order form meant updating multiple documents and shared drives, then notifying reps and retailers to download the newest version.
“It was a highly manual process,” Cupps says. “A lot of steps for us and a lot of steps for the customer.”
Internally, multiple people touched the same orders. Externally, retailers didn’t always know what was in stock until after an order was submitted. Information lived in different places, and even small updates required extra coordination.
The burden wasn’t just operational.
Retailers are managing staff, helping customers on the floor, and placing orders between interruptions. Cupps understands that firsthand.
“I was a retailer for a long time,” he says. “You don’t always have dedicated time. Sometimes you’re lucky and have a day to work on this stuff. A lot of times you’re being called to the register.”
Wholesale shouldn’t add friction to that reality.
As the business scaled, that gap became harder to ignore. If LifeStraw expected retailers to lean into a technical product with a meaningful mission, the ordering experience had to be straightforward. It needed to remove friction, not introduce more of it.
LifeStraw knew it was time to modernize.
The team leaned on industry peers and partners to understand what was actually driving improvement. They wanted to know whether adopting a platform would materially improve their operations and retailer experience.
“At the end of the day, it came down to the support team,” Cupps says. “Were they easy to work with? Did they share the same focus and goals that we did in leveling up wholesale?”
There was also a practical consideration. Cupps would be responsible for building out the platform internally.
“I’m not a web designer,” he says. “What I didn’t want to do was build another clunky experience that just mirrored our spreadsheets.”
Envoy B2B stood out in part because Cupps believed he could realistically build and manage it himself. The admin tools were intuitive, the templates allowed for strong brand presentation without custom development, and the structure was easy to understand. That meant marketing could contribute to the visual storytelling and operations could support logistics without a steep learning curve.
LifeStraw wasn’t looking for complexity. They were looking for something that would make wholesale easier for their team and their retailers.
LifeStraw found that once friction was removed, adoption followed quickly.
“Honestly, the retailers adapted really quickly,” Cupps says. “It was almost a grateful move.”
Retailers immediately saw the benefit of having high-quality product assets, detailed copy, and available inventory in one place. They could place orders, track shipments, and access account information without relying on long email threads.
Retailers are busy. When a platform makes it easier to find products, confirm availability, and place orders efficiently, resistance tends to disappear. For LifeStraw, modernization didn’t disrupt relationships. It made them smoother immediately.
After multiple selling seasons on Envoy B2B, wholesale at LifeStraw feels fundamentally different.
Retailers can now review product assortments visually, access product and marketing assets, understand key features, and place orders with confidence. Because Envoy is directly integrated with LifeStraw’s NetSuite ERP, they can also see real-time inventory, track order and shipment status, and even pay open invoices, all within a single platform experience.
Internally, LifeStraw benefits from having customer data, order history, and contact information consolidated.
“Having that database within Envoy that showcases all my customers, their contact information, their orders, as a one-stop shop makes my life so much easier,” Cupps says.
Instead of managing repetitive email chains, the team can guide retailers to their portal for answers. Questions that once required multiple touch points can often be resolved directly in-platform.
“When operations become almost invisible, that’s when you can focus on the higher-level things,” Cupps says.
That shift allows LifeStraw’s team to spend more time on product strategy, merchandising conversations, and retailer support.
For LifeStraw, Envoy B2B has already solved the most important issues: clear product presentation, accessible information, and less friction in the ordering process.
With that foundation in place, the focus now shifts to expansion rather than correction.
“We haven’t realized the full potential yet,” Cupps says. “There’s still a lot of runway.”
That runway includes deeper communication with dealers, more intentional storytelling through the platform, and scaling parts of the business that still rely on manual processes, such as certain bulk or humanitarian sales workflows.
The core experience is working. Now the opportunity is to build on it.
By removing friction from day-to-day operations, LifeStraw has created space to think more strategically about growth, communication, and global expansion.
For brands evaluating their wholesale tech stack, Cupps offers a simple principle: start with the basics.
“Shops are stretched for time,” he says. “If you can lower friction on the basics, you make those folks happier.”
It’s tempting to get pulled toward the features that seem cutting-edge or innovative. But retailers are not asking for complexity. They are asking for clarity. They want to learn about your products, trust the inventory numbers, place orders quickly, and know where those orders stand.
When those fundamentals are strong, everything else becomes easier.
For LifeStraw, modernizing wholesale wasn’t about chasing trends. It was about becoming easier to work with.
In a relationship-driven industry, that decision continues to pay dividends.