Seafood Distributor with Rapid Growth with BlueTrace

THE SITUATION

A YOUNG TEAM WITH A QUICK START

Stepping into Paul Hagan’s office at the Boston Fish Pier, it’s immediately clear how much he loves what he does, cares for the people he does it with, and how hard he works to keep growing. Denarius Trading Co, a seafood wholesaler which Paul started with his wife in 2020, is as much a labor of love and hard work, as it is the product of his seafood experience and savvy decision-making.

Originally from Duxbury, MA, Paul spent his early career learning as much as he could about oyster varieties and farming techniques, traveling up and down the east coast and overseas as a buyer for retail fish markets and wholesalers. His lifelong love for oysters sparked the idea for Denarius. Named after the Latin word for “money”, honoring the Ancient Romans who traded oyster shells as currency, Denarius is the first US-based oyster distributor with core partnerships in Europe. In just four years, the youngest team on the Pier have built one of today’s most trusted names in seafood distribution.

Paul attributes the rapid growth to effectively leveraging his prior experience to improve business processes. Accurate inventory management is critical, but he hardly worries about it, instead focusing entirely on buying and selling product. “BlueTrace lets me do my job as CEO well because I trust it to do exactly what my team needs it to do. It makes no mistakes. There have been a lot of keys to our success, but starting with BlueTrace week one was top five most important things we’ve done.”

How do we sell as many oysters as possible? That’s the goal every morning, every day: to give our customers the variety and consistency they need, 52 weeks of the year.

Being a small company, I didn’t want to pay for an expensive software and get no personalized support.

Because that’s where the real value lives, in being heard, in them being willing to make adjustments based on your feedback, in having a solution built to solve your unique problems.

Paul hagan, CEO

THE TASK

A Vision and a Team in Need of Tools

From the start, Paul and Valentina’s vision for Denarius has been to source the best seafood for their customers every day. To make good on this promise, they leveraged three key learnings from Paul’s two decades of experience:

1. Traceability is critical. Ensure logs are accurate and accessible.

2. Inventory turnover is a competitive edge. Wasted time is wasted product.

3. Paper is really, really slow. We won’t scale if we aren’t digital.

Paul knew he’d need an accurate log for traceability purposes, but was all too familiar with how slow and error-prone paper processes were at tracking inventory. After burdened by manual data entry and homemade spreadsheets in his prior roles, he wanted a digital solution for his team and a partner who could support them through system integration and business challenges, and share industry knowledge.

One week before they sold their first bag of oysters, a mutual contact introduced Paul to Chip Terry, BlueTrace CEO. Chip arrived with the app-based printers and left with a partnership that would prove mutually beneficial for years to come.

THE SOLUTION

Identify a Tool that Works, and a Team Leader to Manage It

Paul made a key organizational decision at the beginning: to have his floor manager, Chris, be the team’s BlueTrace expert.

“We needed a system that would help us expedite everything— driving trucks, packing orders, selling, buying—and needed someone to own it. That’s been Chris from the early days. He’s trained many staff members on BlueTrace and they’re doing a phenomenal job.”

Identifying a digital expert is a critical success driver for teams using a new software tool. As Paul demonstrated, this expert should not be the CEO. “I’m not good at BlueTrace, my team is, and I trust them 100%.”Identifying a digital expert is a critical success driver for teams using a new software tool. As Paul demonstrated, this expert should not be the CEO. “I’m not good at BlueTrace, my team is, and I trust them 100%.”

DIGITAL TAGS, TRUE TIME SAVERS

“From the time oysters are packed, shipped, and delivered, we get email notifications the second our farmers print the tags for their bags, so we get to see what they’re harvesting, get to see ice time, and know what’s coming our way well before they’re en route. This means we can pre-receive and start selling product we know is coming. BlueTrace is the reason we have that visibility and planning.”

MANY ASKS, INSTANT ANSWERS

Though Paul isn’t often in the BlueTrace app, his job depends on the visibility the platform provides. At any moment, he’s fielding multiple emails, phone calls, and texts from vendors or customers asking for item availability, expected delivery times, harvest & shipping details, product freshness, order or invoice status, and pricing. With a few clicks in BlueTrace app and a walkie talkie confirmation to the team, he has answers in seconds.

THE RESULT

Better Margins, Brand & Growth

Leading his young company, Paul can’t afford to leave money on the table. Trusting BlueTrace to 100% accurately track inventory is a hugely understated source of value. “I’ve worked for companies who threw away seven figures of inventory because of expired product or shellfish that was mis-rotated and had to get dumped. A company our size can’t afford to make those mistakes. We throw away no product. Zero waste. I would challenge any other seafood company in Boston to make that same statement.”

The brand’s equity is also at stake. Getting brand-new oysters for their wholesale customers, who sell to chefs who want oysters harvested same day as plating, is no small feat. But with BlueTrace, Denarius can turn inventory incredibly fast. This competitive edge drives trust, as does having the records easily accessible. Valentina Hagan remembers a case when the digital database came in handy: “There was an issue at a restaurant that had received product from one of our wholesale customers. The wholesaler took multiple days to get the health inspector their data to determine where they’d bought the oysters, but it took me 3 minutes to pull the records using BlueTrace. Safe to say the inspector was really pleased with us”

Most exciting for Paul is the growth trajectory that BlueTrace affords them. “Five years ago, Denarius didn’t exist, so it’s hard to say where we’ll be 5 years from now, but I know it’ll be successful. We’ve built a great group of core customers, I have an incredible team, and a software system that’s universal in the industry. It’s all we need to keep growing.”

Denarius
Trading Co

A YOUNG TEAM WITH A QUICK START

"We move oysters extremely fast by design, because we can.”

Paul hagan, CEO

A Vision and a Team in Need of Tools

1. Traceability is critical. Ensure logs are accurate and accessible.

2. Inventory turnover is a competitive edge. Wasted time is wasted product.

3. Paper is really, really slow. We won’t scale if we aren’t digital.

Identify a Tool that Works, and a Team Leader to Manage It

DIGITAL TAGS, TRUE TIME SAVERS

MANY ASKS, INSTANT ANSWERS

Better Margins, Brand & Growth

The BlueTrace Difference

PAUL HAGAN, CEO

SCHEDULE A DEMO WITH AN EXPERT

DenariusTrading Co

A YOUNG TEAM WITH A QUICK START

"We move oysters extremely fast by design, because we can.”

Paul hagan, CEO

A Vision and a Team in Need of Tools

1. Traceability is critical. Ensure logs are accurate and accessible.

2. Inventory turnover is a competitive edge. Wasted time is wasted product.

3. Paper is really, really slow. We won’t scale if we aren’t digital.

Identify a Tool that Works, and a Team Leader to Manage It

DIGITAL TAGS, TRUE TIME SAVERS

MANY ASKS, INSTANT ANSWERS

Better Margins, Brand & Growth

The BlueTrace Difference

PAUL HAGAN, CEO

SCHEDULE A DEMO WITH AN EXPERT

Denarius
Trading Co