What began as a passion for home baking is now a solid mid-market company generating over €1.5 million annually. Disruptivos and Mailchimp are part of the recipe for success.
In 2009, when Andrés Bonilla returned to his roots in Alhaurín el Grande (Málaga, Spain), he took advantage of the artisan mills in the region and opened El Amasadero, an online store selling flours and baking tools to a growing community of home bakers.
From the start, he built a strong connection with them by focusing on high-quality, specialized ingredients from local producers. He discovered that what seemed like a simple commodity—flour—was actually a complex, nuanced product with a dedicated following. Understanding this is what made them believe in the long-term project, explains Andrés from the El Amasadero factory in Málaga.
This focus on quality and specialization became their core identity. After briefly exploring other business models, they committed to building their own purpose-driven brand, creating a unique line of flours and tools.
Sixteen years later, El Amasadero is a growing mid-market company serving over 85,000 amateur and professional bakers across Spain and Portugal. The team of 8 is still small, but the brand's impact and ambition are enormous.
The challenge: Scaling with the community and making the leap to marketing automation
From the beginning, El Amasadero's community has been its foundation, and it has been a symbiotic relationship. In the early years, that feedback fueled the company's growth. In turn, it was the valuable content that Andrés and his team published that encouraged the community to engage and expand.
The first major challenge they faced was that their audience was scaling faster than they could keep up with. In the search for a tool to send their content on their own terms, El Amasadero turned to Intuit Mailchimp, which perfectly suited their needs.
“Mailchimp was a fundamental tool for growing the business and building a solid bond with our community. We started using Mailchimp in 2014, and first, we saw a significant increase in revenue, and second, we realized it was the perfect tool for connecting with our audience,” says Andrés.
At the time, Mailchimp also helped them understand what content interested their audience and plan around an editorial calendar.
After a decade of building the community, Andrés knew there was more they could do with the Mailchimp tools they already had, so he sought the help of experts.
They started working with Disruptivos, a Málaga-based digital strategy consulting agency and Mailchimp pro partner.
“The first thing we noticed was that they had a great database. It was extensive; they had been building it for years; they ran excellent content campaigns; they had high engagement; the content was very good; and people tended to read it. Still, there were many opportunities for improvement in terms of integrations with their e-commerce platform, segmentation, and advanced customer journeys,” recalls Javier Moral, director of Disruptivos.
Although effective in the basics, El Amasadero's email marketing strategy wasn't leveraging Mailchimp’s more advanced capabilities. Disruptivos identified opportunities to unlock growth by deepening customer understanding, personalizing communication to different segments, optimizing integrations with their e-commerce platform, and scaling operations with automation.