About Mercanta
Mercanta is a London-based specialty coffee merchant operating under the name The Coffee Hunters. Founded in 1996, Mercanta sources green coffees from over 15 producing countries and distributes them to specialty roasters across the UK, Europe, the US, and Asia-Pacific, with offices in London, Seattle, Berlin, and Singapore. With a global team of traders and account managers handling thousands of roaster relationships across all markets, Mercanta needed a CRM audit and optimization before rolling out Attio to 15 seats across four international offices - a classic challenge for any global B2B operation that has self-implemented a CRM before bringing in expert support.
The Challenge
Mercanta had been using Attio for about three months before engaging Novlini. The system had been set up internally and was working at a basic level, but several structural issues were limiting its usefulness ahead of a planned global rollout to 15 seats across all offices.
Three problems needed addressing:
Leads falling into a dead zone. Inbound leads arriving via Gmail were matching against email domains rather than company names, causing a significant number to land in an "unnamed company vacuum" where they sat unassigned and invisible to the team.
Formstack workflow incomplete. Mercanta's primary lead source was a Formstack form on their website. The integration with Attio was partially configured but inconsistent - leads were not always creating or updating the right records, and the geographic assignment logic to route leads to the correct trader by region had not been built.
Producer relationship model missing. Mercanta manages two distinct relationship types: roasters (their customers) and producers (the farms and cooperatives they buy coffee from). These two entities had different relationship structures - producers needed to be connected to multiple contacts across different roles, and the existing setup didn't model this cleanly.
Our Approach
Novlini delivered the engagement as a structured audit, optimization, and enablement over 3.5 days.
Audit
Full review of the existing Attio workspace: data model, object relationships, import history, Formstack integration, Gmail sync configuration, and existing views. Each structural issue identified and prioritized with the Mercanta team before any changes were made.
CRM Optimization
Gmail matching logic fixed: corrected the domain-based matching configuration to prevent inbound leads from falling into unnamed company records. A cleanup process run on existing unnamed records to reclassify and associate them correctly.
Formstack to Attio integration rebuilt: lead creation and update logic reconfigured to ensure consistent record creation. Geographic assignment workflow built: when a new lead comes in via Formstack, the workflow reads the country or region field and automatically assigns the lead to the trader responsible for that geography.
Producer relationship model built: a structured approach to modeling producer contacts, with role attributes (owner, agronomist, export manager, etc.) linked to the producer company record. This gives the buying team a clean view of their producer network alongside the sales team's roaster pipeline.
Views and lists configured for each market: UK, Europe, US, and APAC team views set up so that traders in each office see only their relevant accounts and leads by default.
Enablement
Live training session delivered with the core team in London. Documentation produced covering the data model, lead routing logic, and how to add new accounts, leads, and contacts. Recorded walkthrough for the offices not present at the live session.
Technology Stack
Attio - CRM, roaster pipeline, producer relationship management (source of truth)
Formstack - lead capture form (connected to Attio with geographic routing)
The Results
Mercanta went from a partially configured Attio setup with structural gaps to a clean, optimized workspace ready for a global rollout across four offices.
Lead vacuum eliminated - inbound Gmail leads now match correctly to company records, no more unnamed company dead zone
Geographic lead routing live - Formstack leads automatically assigned to the right trader based on region, no manual triage required
Producer network modeled correctly - buying team has a structured view of producer relationships distinct from the roaster sales pipeline
Global team ready to onboard - views configured per market, documentation and training delivered for all offices
"Professional and clinical audit and configuration of our Attio before a global rollout. Very much enjoyed working with Novlini and would highly recommend."
Ben Palmer - Mercanta ★★★★★
Why It Matters
Specialty coffee trading is a relationship business where the same roaster might buy from your London office this season and from your Seattle office next season. A CRM that fragments those relationships by market - or loses leads in an unnamed company vacuum - makes coordination impossible.
For any global B2B company preparing to roll out Attio to an international team, getting the audit and optimization right before the rollout - fixing the lead matching logic, building the geographic routing workflow, and configuring market-specific views - is the difference between a CRM that gets adopted and one that gets ignored.