Location/Region: St George, UT
Industry: Adventure vehicles manufacturing
Apps implemented: Manufacturing, Accounting, Inventory, Purchase, Helpdesk
Software
Replaced: NetSuite, WooCommerce and Spreadsheets
Size of the company: <20
Hosting type: Odoo.sh
When American Adventure Lab set out to bring structure and visibility to a growing operation, the team needed more than disconnected tools and spreadsheets. They needed a complete system: one that could handle complex bills of materials, in-house manufacturing, inventory accuracy, accounting insight, and customer support in a single platform. For founder Brit Mansell, Odoo became exactly that: a unified solution that finally allowed the business to operate with clarity, control, and confidence.
Founded in 2018 and based in St. George, Utah, American Adventure Lab designs and manufactures innovative adventure vehicles and vehicle accessories for customers who travel on and off-road. The company specializes in solving real problems for outdoor enthusiasts, building products that help people stay comfortable, capable, and well-equipped.
American Adventure Lab operates as both a product development and vehicle customization business. Every design decision is rooted in function, durability, and real use cases. As the company grew, so did its product catalog: today, the company manages roughly 400 top products, which expand into 2,700–2,800 individual components through complex bills of materials. All manufacturing is done in-house, with the exception of powder coating and injection molding, making production control and workflow visibility critical.
"We specialize in products and vehicles that solve problems and supplement your ability to create lifelong memories.”
Before Odoo: When Growth Outpaced the Tools
Before adopting Odoo, American Adventure Lab relied on a mix of WooCommerce, spreadsheets, and manual processes to manage orders, inventory, and production planning. WooCommerce handled eCommerce well, but it was never designed to be an inventory or manufacturing system. Inventory levels were often only discovered to be incorrect at the very last stage, when an order was ready to ship.
The company also attempted a NetSuite implementation, investing heavily in both time and money. That implementation ran for two years, and never went live. According to Mansell, the software itself was less of a problem than the consulting process: requirement gathering repeatedly failed, project managers changed, and new blockers emerged at every planned launch date. At one point, the business was paying for 10–11 NetSuite users, incurring a significant monthly cost with no operational return.
"We did a NetSuite implementation for exactly two years, and it never launched. It was very expensive and very frustrating."
A Different Way Forward with Odoo
American Adventure Lab’s introduction to Odoo came unexpectedly: from a billboard near Salt Lake City aimed at manufacturers. The timing couldn’t have been better. Mansell, who has a background in software and prior ERP implementations, spent a few hours researching Odoo and quickly recognized what had been missing before: flexibility, completeness, and a pricing model that didn’t rely on massive consulting fees.
After testing the SaaS version of Odoo for a month or two and walking the shop team through its functionality, the company decided to move forward. Instead of a single “big bang” rollout, the implementation happened in phases: starting with Purchase, followed by Accounting (including the import of two years of historical data), and eventually Manufacturing.
The turning point came when production orders, routes, operations, and bills of materials finally came together in a single system. What once lived in the heads of a few experienced employees became structured, documented, and repeatable inside Odoo, just in time. Shortly after implementation began, American Adventure Lab lost three key employees, along with a significant amount of undocumented product knowledge. Because BOMs and operations had already been recreated in Odoo, the business was able to continue operating without losing control of its manufacturing process.
"Odoo was everything I wanted NetSuite to be, without the requirement to pay gigantic consulting fees."
Today, Odoo is the operational backbone of American Adventure Lab. The Manufacturing app enables the company to manage hundreds of products and thousands of components through clearly defined bills of materials and routes. The team makes two to three BOM changes per week, most of them small refinements, and follows those BOMs strictly throughout production to ensure consistency and quality.
Production orders are printed directly from Odoo and act as travelers across the shop floor, guiding parts through laser cutting, de-nesting, press brake operations, sanding, powder coating, assembly, and packing. Work centers are supported by PCs and tablets, including mobile and stations used for picking and cycle counts. Barcode scanners integrated into manufacturing operations save time and reduce errors during production reporting.
Inventory accuracy improved dramatically through reordering rules, ensuring components are available when needed. While forecasting is still handled manually, the ability to trigger manufacturing and purchasing automatically based on stock levels eliminated the chronic overproduction and last-minute shortages that plagued the business before.
Accounting and reporting have also been transformational. With Odoo, the team can finally drill into sales data, analyze performance trends, and run meaningful reports, something that was impossible using website data and spreadsheets alone. These insights now power weekly executive meetings, monthly updates, and better decision-making.
The Helpdesk app became another unexpected win. With approximately 50,000 orders processed since founding, customer inquiries are frequent and often product-specific. Previously managed through a single shared inbox, support requests are now organized, tracked, and resolved efficiently, reducing internal chaos and improving customer communication.
Odoo also integrates with WooCommerce for eCommerce and ShipStation for shipping, using a connector from Emipro Technologies. Shipping rates improved immediately, and fulfillment is now tightly linked to manufacturing completion.
"What sold it for me was how complete it is. Odoo provided all the tools we needed in one package."
What’s coming up for American Adventure Lab
Looking ahead, American Adventure Lab plans to continue refining its manufacturing workflows and shop floor interactions. The company has already outgrown its 10,000 sq. ft. facility, so it recently acquired another building to support future growth and is now in the process of relocating vehicle installation projects and R&D operations to the new space, while also bringing powder coating fully in-house. Manufacturing will remain a core in-house activity, and Odoo will play a critical role in orchestrating these expanded capabilities, ensuring seamless coordination and visibility across both facilities as the company scales.
From a systems perspective, forecasting is a top priority. Mansell is exploring ways to better align reordering rules with recent sales trends to move from reactive planning to proactive production. There are also plans to improve telephony integration, allowing incoming calls to surface customer history and lifetime value directly within Odoo, giving support staff better context in real time.
Despite these future enhancements, the foundation is solid. Odoo now enables the company to launch new products quickly and with confidence. In many cases, new products are fully defined, including components, operations, and routes, over a weekend and live on Monday morning, requiring virtually no additional training for the shop team.
For manufacturers facing similar challenges, American Adventure Lab’s journey shows what’s possible with the right platform. By centralizing operations in Odoo, businesses can replace guesswork with visibility, chaos with structure, and growth pains with sustainable processes. Ready to see how Odoo can bring the same clarity to your operations? Contact Odoo today and discover it by yourself.
