At the Swedish company Najell, there are primarily two product categories that are bestsellers: baby carriers and portable sleeping solutions for infants, known as SleepCarriers. Previously, all sales were made through the Swedish company, which reached a turnover of 150 million SEK in 2024. In order to continue scaling the business, Najell is working on establishing separate entities in some of its primary markets. This is an extremely comprehensive project where they are now building the group structure for intercompany together with Codeunit, including both e-commerce and physical stores.
Through its e-commerce platform, Najell sells products for children and parents all over the world. The office and warehouse are located in Sweden, while manufacturing takes place in Asia. During the spring, Najell established companies in the USA and Denmark to easily and scalably manage sales in those respective markets. Expansion continues, and specific companies for Norway and the UK are now being set up.
Finance & tech lead the work
The finance & tech department plays a central role in Najell’s expansion into new markets, with a specific focus on the formation of new legal entities. To support this initiative, Anton Gustle was hired as Finance & Tech Manager to lead broader strategic efforts within finance and technology. His team of five works across several areas, including financial operations, systems, and integrations.
Najell does not have a dedicated IT department. Instead, each department manages the systems relevant to its own operations closely together with IT consultants. For the Finance team, this includes all payment-related systems, such as the ERP platform Business Central. Since Business Central serves as the core of Najell’s IT infrastructure, it was a natural choice for Anton’s team to oversee the integration work.
A fast-moving culture
Najell has been working with Codeunit as their integration partner for some time. Since the collaboration has been successful, Codeunit has taken on a key role in the intercompany project, helping to set up an automated flow between the new entities. Najell was founded by Niklas and Freja Najafi Kristensen in 2012 and has since grown into a large company. Still, the culture of working like a startup remains. Anton describes it as building while running, constantly coming up with new ideas along the way.
“There’s a lot happening at once and decisions are made quickly. Najell wants to stay at the forefront and implement new systems fast. When things are moving quickly, it’s important that our partners can keep up. That’s why working with Codeunit has been great, they’re very fast and flexible. I know we can be a bit complicated at times with rapidly changing scopes, but Codeunit is always positive and excellent to work with,” says Anton Gustle.
Integration between finance and IT
The new companies must be able to communicate with each other and integrate into Najell’s IT and financial environments through an intercompany flow. All products are purchased from factories in Asia by the Swedish company Najell AB, and will now be sold on to companies in, for example, the USA and Denmark. This leads to many internal sales and transactions between the parent company and subsidiaries, something that would be difficult to manage manually.
“The entire flow needs to happen automatically. Both in Business Central, in Centra which is our e-commerce platform, and in the reporting to our warehouse system Nowaste. If a customer in the USA orders a product online, the intercompany solution from Codeunit is triggered. An internal purchase is made between our American and Swedish companies. The situation is somewhat complex: while our American company is an internal customer, the main customer is of course the e-commerce customer in the U.S. This makes it crucial that the integration with Nowaste works smoothly, so the warehouse can correctly identify the recipient, explains Anton.
Hundreds of orders per day
Najell sells to private individuals as well as retailers and handles large volumes with several hundred orders daily. This makes manual order processing impossible and highlights the need for an automated flow. Having separate companies for the UK and USA is closely linked to customs and laws. Additionally, Najell is considering the possibility of having its own warehouses in these markets in the future.
“It’s important to establish your intercompany flow and all related integrations correctly from the beginning - making changes later can be very challenging. While Codeunit has implemented similar solutions for other clients, our specific setup required a tailored approach that we developed together. We had a rough idea of how we wanted it, and together with Codeunit we created a structure for how the flow should work. But you never know exactly what will happen during the process. Codeunit has been very fast, helpful, and has found solutions to the challenges we’ve encountered,” Anton explains.
Complex flow with POS system
In June, Najell opened its very first physical store in Copenhagen, with another store in Oslo on the way. With stores and employed staff, the local companies help ease the financial management, but this also adds more integrations that need to function. Both online and physical sales within a country are handled by the same company. For a complete intercompany flow, the store’s POS system Sitoo is integrated with the Danish setup in Business Central, and product data including images is retrieved from Centra to Sitoo.
“Physical stores make the integration more complex. The stores are the ones purchasing products and acting as a warehouse. We’ve set up a store warehouse in Business Central for the Danish company, and Codeunit has made it possible for the store to place a purchase order, for Nowaste to send the products, and for goods to be received in the POS system. We had no previous experience with Sitoo, so Codeunit was a great help in supporting us with setting up the flow. The BC flow was something we built together,” says Anton.
Norway and the UK next in line
In addition to the tools mentioned above, Najell uses several systems that Codeunit has integrated and that are affected by the intercompany flow. These include Madden Analytics for sales follow up and purchase planning, Reclaimit for returns, and Resourced for PIM and PLM. After the summer, Najell and Codeunit will continue working together to build a similar setup for the UK and Norway with associated stores.
