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Le Petit Ballon

  • E-commerce

Leaving SQL exports behind to steer a subscription model

How Le Petit Ballon, specialists in monthly wine box subscriptions and online sales, structured its data to steer profitability and subscriber value with Biron.

99.97%
consistency between orders and bank export
126
metrics crossed with 146 dimensions
32
users across 5 business areas
3
customer-value horizons tracked: 12, 24 and 36 months

The client

Le Petit Ballon, the subscription that opens wine up

Founded in 2011, Le Petit Ballon pursues a simple mission: making wine more reachable, easier to buy and simpler to enjoy. Two bottles selected every month, shipped to a community of 125,000 subscribers, and more than 560,000 boxes delivered since launch. A subscription model whose health does not show in the month’s revenue, but in how long each customer stays.

Sector
Wine & spirits
Founded
2011
Revenue
> €20M
Headcount
40
Biron client
since 2018
Community
125,000 subscribers · 560,000 boxes shipped
An open Le Petit Ballon box next to two bottles of wine and the La Gazette magazine

The challenge

Figures only reachable by those who knew how to produce them

Le Petit Ballon was ahead of its market, and behind on structuring its data. Every slightly specific question went through an extraction, a SQL query, a CSV file: a detour that reserved access to the figures for those who knew how to produce them, and made any analysis a chore.

  • Steering that depended on manual extractions and SQL queries, out of reach of the business teams

  • Product costs absent from the e-commerce tool, so a real margin was impossible to establish

  • Customer value measured in the moment, while a subscription model plays out over several years

  • Sales and payment data to make reliable before anything could be decided from it

The Biron answer

Reliable figures, reachable by every team

Biron took the chain back to the base: bringing the data in and checking it, before building the analyses that matter for a subscription model — the real margin per product, and the value of a subscriber over time.

  • Integration, verified

    20,000 orders reconciled against the bank export, up to 99.97% consistency, to settle the reliability of the foundation before drawing any analysis from it.

  • Real margin per product

    Historical costs rebuilt where the e-commerce tool had none, then sales split by margin band, right down to the type of wine.

  • Customer value over time

    Value generated tracked at 12, 24 and 36 months — the indicator that governs a subscription model and settles the acquisition budgets.

How it went

  1. Bringing in the sales and payment sources, with bank reconciliation order by order
  2. Rebuilding the historical product costs, absent from the e-commerce tool
  3. Modelling margin by product and by type of wine, in profitability bands
  4. Building customer-value tracking by horizon: 12, 24 and 36 months
  5. Opening the tool up to the Data, Digital Marketing, Range, Logistics and Finance teams

The results

Data out of the data team

The teams reach steering reports directly, without going through a query: the extractions and the CSV files are gone, and profitability reads product by product.

  • No more extractions and CSVs: the teams reach steering reports directly, without going through a query

  • Profitability readable product by product, including on the references sold at a loss

  • A subscriber’s value measured over three years, to settle acquisition on the long run rather than on the first order

  • A foundation verified at 99.97% against the actual payments

  • 30+ users across five teams, from the occasional look to dashboards built unaided

Inside a Le Petit Ballon cellar: shelves of reds and whites around a blue central island

“Biron helped us catch up on the ground we had lost in structuring our data, and got us out of extractions, SQL queries and CSV files so we could have clear steering reports. With the quality of the solution and the expertise of the team, the cost-benefit has been very positive for us.”

Grégoire Remy Data & Digital Marketing Director · Le Petit Ballon
Grégoire Remy, Data & Digital Marketing Director of Le Petit Ballon

Behind the scenes

What Le Petit Ballon steers in Biron today

From verified payments through to a subscriber’s value over three years, Biron serves five business areas from one foundation.

  • Prestashop

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