Table of Contents
** Minutes
Dealing with the physical and mental toll of packing boxes
Handing off fulfillment to a global partner, while saving money
Learn how the Founder of Juspy adapted her primary offering, launched during a pandemic, and leveraged ShipBob’s global fulfillment solution to get her life back while saving on logistics costs.
Customer Profile
Based in Ireland, Juspy is a powdered formula that’s more than a collagen supplement, protein powder, a meal replacement, and healthy snack — it’s a clean label lifestyle product that is high in protein, with good fats and antioxidants, that’s gut-healthy, satisfies a chocoholic’s sweet tooth, and can help you nourish your body inside-out. Intended to be “the background to your foreground,” Juspy is not only healthy but very versatile in a category they call ‘flexible lifestyle food’. Loyal customers use it as their 3pm slump solution, in their breakfast creations, mid-morning mochas, cacao pancakes, protein ball snacks, and more.
Key metrics
- 4.5 years in the making
- 2020: official launch
- 50% of time previously spent on fulfillment
About six years ago, Leonie Lynch was doing a lot — pregnant with her first child then feeding her baby, studying for her PhD, and had never experienced exhaustion at that level. She was craving sugar and coffee, and, like so many other people, wanting someone to do the thinking for her when it came to nourishing food.
One day, she saw a baby formula label that said “everything your baby needs in one place” and thought to herself, “I need that too.” In 2018, she developed the first version of Juspy — a fresh drink — that she launched at WellFest in Ireland.
While everyone loved taste, it was impossible to get it off the ground as the ingredients were expensive, it was fresh with a short shelf life and she had no functioning supply chain, among other challenges along the way.
After a frustrating several-year journey, she made a big pivot in May 2019 — instead of a fresh ready-made drink, she reformulated it into a nutrient-dense powder made with natural ingredients, no refined sugar, no stabilisers, and no additives. All you need is a small blender and to add cold milk or milk alternative, and you have an energy-boosting drink that offers sweet nourishment while keeping you fuller, longer.
This change drastically expanded her target market from new moms to a much broader spectrum of busy or tired people who don’t eat breakfast, who experience energy slumps in the afternoon, or who are otherwise in search of a healthy, indulgent chocolate hit.
This brought her into March 2020 when COVID hit which significantly delayed her launch. After doing a lot of beta testing during those few months, she refined the recipe with real customers and then officially launched in October 2020, and quickly sold through her first 1,000 units.
We sat down with Leonie Lynch, Founder & CEO of Juspy to hear more about her journey in product development, branding, and logistics.
Dealing with the physical and mental toll of packing boxes
As told to ShipBob by Leonie Lynch, Founder & CEO of Juspy.
Once I pivoted my business and launched it late last year, the second part of my dream was to no longer have to pack boxes at home.
As a one-woman show, I was self-fulfilling dozens of orders each day out of my home office and packing boxes myself. I did not want to deal with fulfillment. I barely had any time to work on the creative marketing and branding side of the business.
“50% of my time spent was packing boxes. Not only that, but it was a constant interruption. I would sit down to do an email marketing campaign, have to attend to new orders, and completely lose my train of thought and flow. I spent about 3 minutes per order on fulfillment. I almost didn’t want orders to come in.”
Leonie Lynch, Founder & CEO of Juspy
While you cannot have a business without sales, you cannot grow the business without developing it. It was hard to get things done and balance both.
I was a pilates instructor for 11 years, so I know how I should carry my posture in space. But when all the orders came in I would sit on the floor and start folding boxes, packing product, taping boxes and sticking labels on boxes. My back would be destroyed. It was so laborsome, time-consuming, and tiring.
“On other occasions I would try to box up 100 orders at a time, but there were physical consequences. From the amount of paper cuts on my hands to having a very messy house, the physical toll was intense.”
Leonie Lynch, Founder & CEO of Juspy
Plus when it came to labels, it was a slow process to type in my customers’ names, eircodes, email addresses, phone numbers, and more on each package. I wanted a good unboxing experience and would wrap each pack in tissue paper and add a sticker.
I had to find a fulfillment partner and began looking for an all-in-one solution. ShipBob was the exact solution I was looking for.
Handing off fulfillment to a global partner, while saving money
When I first started looking at ShipBob, it sounded too good to be true with their international locations that could cover all my bases (eventually even getting into the United States and Canada).
We just got started in ShipBob’s Ireland fulfillment center, and will next expand into their London facility to continue building momentum in the UK.
“When I was shipping orders myself, what I paid per order is the same price now to pick, pack, and ship orders through ShipBob. It’s even much cheaper to ship to certain countries, which used to take ages and often got lost with localised post here.
Now, I have very transparent pricing, and I can easily run and plan my business.”
Leonie Lynch, Founder & CEO of Juspy
I also like that I’m billed right away. My old carrier billed monthly, which would drain a huge sum of Euros from my account at once. My cash flow has improved.
Our store is on WooCommerce, which integrates well with ShipBob. I loved how easy it was to set up my products in the dashboard for all SKUs (our box, pouch, marketing insert, etc.).
We launched a “waste not, want not” product in our efforts against food waste. It is inventory that is completely safe to consume but doesn’t look as visually pleasing because it looks vacuum packed (which could be jarring for first-time customers). People can opt in, knowing it’s an imperfect-looking product in exchange for a discount.
Rather than waste products that look less-than-ideal during the manufacturing process, we have a more sustainable solution without compromising the customer experience.
ShipBob completes a spot check for us to identify and locate such products and store them in a separate bin, so we can treat it as a separate SKU when shipping out those orders. That also saves me the time in having to deal with the return of those products to me.
We also have easy ways to manage subscription orders as well as expiration dates and lot numbers, so inventory goes in First In, First Out (FIFO).
One of the most impressive parts of our experience with ShipBob so far was working with our Implementation Manager. Whenever there was a problem, everything was sorted out immediately.
During the first few days I was overcharged on the shipping. It was a simple location set up error and when it was flagged it was sorted immediately and it was refunded very quickly, no problem. With logistics, there will always be problems, but having the quick support and help through ShipBob is great.
“Before ShipBob I would have been terrified if an influencer posted about our product, and an instantaneous 1,000 orders came in, I would have had no way to handle that.
Now I am totally ready for that. I think the biggest benefit and joy of working with ShipBob is the blocks of uninterrupted time I have back. I feel so free today. It really takes the stress out as a lone wolf entrepreneur.”
Leonie Lynch, Founder & CEO of Juspy
What’s next for Juspy?
You never know what a product can do until it’s out in the market. My customers are co-creating the Juspy brand and helping define its many use cases — from throwing in a shot of espresso in a mocha, to warming it up for hot chocolate, and creating beautiful breakfast bowls.
As a lifestyle brand, Juspy is flexible and we aim to fit in where you need it. We want to change the world in a small way via healthy habits that stick (so health isn’t a chore). The current view of health can be so sacrificial (a good or bad effort in the pursuit of health) — e.g., often about control, limitations and the notion that the worse it tastes, the better it is for you — but we’re putting the fun back in health without over-promising.
We have now have a listing on Amazon UK and are hoping to open that listing up to Europe this year also. I was very pleased and relieved to find out that ShipBob offers FBA prep too for customers as a value-added service. Again this is sorting out another logistical problem for me.
I’ve already referred a friend and fellow founder to ShipBob, who already loves how easy the dashboard is to use, since he was using a 3PL’s technology in Ireland that was less than ideal and very manual. I look forward to our continued partnership especially as Juspy hits that next level of growth.
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