Barrett Distribution is a third-party logistics (3PL) provider with a strong reputation for supporting fast-growing direct-to-consumer brands. As the VP of IT for over 16 years, Doug Varga has led Barrett’s digital evolution, helping it transition from a traditional family-run business into a modern, tech-enabled fulfillment and logistics partner.
The Challenge
As Barrett expanded its services to meet the demands of digitally native brands, its team was increasingly bogged down by the time and effort required to integrate and support new customer systems. Onboarding a new brand often meant building and maintaining custom code, especially for platforms like Shopify. Even relatively simple changes — such as recognizing specific tags or managing multiple storefronts — required skilled development resources. This slowed onboarding, stretched internal teams thin and delayed time-to-value for new customers.
The Solution
Barrett turned to Pipe17 to streamline its order operations and reduce the overhead of customer onboarding. The platform’s pre-built connectors and no-code order orchestration capabilities allowed Barrett to replace its in-house Shopify connector and shift onboarding responsibilities from developers to its non-technical project management office. Pipe17 made it possible to configure integrations for new brands in days — without pulling in developers.
“We’ve de-skilled the entire process. Our onboarding team handles it. The IT team is out of the loop and that’s a good thing.”
— Doug Varga, Vice President of Information Technology @ Barrett Distribution
By adopting Pipe17, Barrett was able to give customers self-service access to a shared exception dashboard, eliminating the need to route every issue through Barrett’s IT support team.
“Instead of our support team logging tickets, customers get real-time exception alerts through Pipe17. Now we manage issues by exception, not by default.”
— Doug Varga, Vice President of Information Technology @ Barrett Distribution
The platform also provided built-in tooling for order routing and seasonal flexibility, enabling Barrett to quickly adapt to each brand’s unique fulfillment needs. Importantly, Pipe17 allowed customers to retain control of their operations, so they weren’t locked into Barrett’s systems — something Doug sees as a key trust-builder when selling to new clients.
The Results
| 60+ accounts Deployed since going live with Pipe17. | 21 days Amount of time to onboard 20+ Shopify storefronts. | 0 developers and IT resources needed to integrate a new customer. |
With Pipe17, Barrett significantly reduced the time and cost of onboarding new customers. The IT team is no longer involved in customer integrations and support workloads have decreased thanks to Pipe17’s exception management features. Barrett now uses Pipe17 not just as a backend tool, but as a central part of its value proposition to brands. The platform enables Barrett to pitch a flexible, low-risk solution that helps customers scale quickly and confidently—without sacrificing control or speed.
“Pipe17 brings in the parts of an iPaaS you want, without the complexity. And the orchestration layer? That’s a huge win.”
— Doug Varga, Vice President of Information Technology @ Barrett Distribution
To learn more about how Pipe17 can help you meet market demands and win more deals by delivering connectivity, automation and real-time visibility, explore Why Pipe17: Solutions for 3PLs.