More and more consumers are ditching traditional retail with a newfound loyalty towards direct-to-consumer (DTC) brands, especially in health and nutrition. 

And it’s not just in the United States alone. The rising trend in health and nutrition products sold by DTC brands is a global phenomenon. I

f you’re looking to grow your heath and nutrition business online, it might be time to partner with an international fulfillment company like ShipBob. We can help you grow your ecommerce business faster by providing the infrastructure and technology you need to stay competitive.

What is health and nutrition fulfillment?

Health and nutrition fulfillment refers to the picking, packing, and shipping of health and nutrition goods, such as meal replacements, protein powders, protein shakes, energy drinks, and more.

These types of products need extra attention when it comes to inventory storage and shipping safely, such as fragile fulfillment. 

“Having confidence in scaling fulfillment is hypercritical for us. With ShipBob, we find comfort in knowing we can scale and have orders fulfilled in a quick manner.”

Tim Fink, Co-Founder of EnduroSport, a supplement DTC brand

Diet product fulfillment

Fulfilling items for diet products (such as smoothie powder, protein, energy drinks), require additional fulfillment needs. To properly fulfill dietary products, you will need to consider a proper storage environment, optimized picking and packing methods (i.e., first in, first out), and ensure safe, reliable shipping.

ShipBob offers solutions for diet product fulfillment that make it easier for brands to worry less managing inventory to ensure quality (such as tracking expiry dates).

For instance, Juspy is a brand that offers powdered formula items that are high in protein, offer good fats and antioxidants, gut-healthy, satisfies a chocoholic’s sweet tooth, and can help you nourish your body inside-out.

They needed a solution to store and fulfill product that are of high quality but are less appealing (e.g., damaged packaging), so they worked with ShipBob to develop an optimized process for their “waste not, want not” initiative while still automating fulfillment and offering shipping worldwide.

“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.”

Leonie Lynch, Founder & CEO of Juspy

Challenges of shipping health and nutrition products

Fulfilling and shipping health and nutrition orders come with more challenges than other products like apparel, jewelry, books, etc. When selling health and nutrition products online, you have to consider FDA regulations, quality control, and additional safety measures.

FDA-approved warehouse

Utilizing an FDA-certified warehouse is required if your ecommerce business sells products like dietary supplements to packaged and non-perishable food products. ShipBob is a 3PL best suited for products that don’t require approval by the FDA but are regulated by the FDA.

Quality control and lot management

It’s important to stay on top of quality control for health and nutrition products. ShipBob offers lot management to better track expiration dates in the event of a recall.

ShipBob’s lot feature allows you to separate items based on their lot numbers. When you send us a lot item, we will not store it with other non-lot items, or other lots of the same item. Our software’s logic is designed to always ship items with the closest expiration lot date.

How ShipBob grows health and nutrition ecommerce brands

With so much growth and competition in the health and nutrition industry online, those who wish to find success need to stand out. Offering fast and affordable shipping, along with an exceptional unboxing experience, has been proven to significantly reducecart abandonment and keep customers coming back for more. 

Here’s how ShipBob can solve common growth issues.

A great unboxing experience

When it comes to purchasing health and nutrition products online, anunboxing experience is part of the product that customers are buying. ShipBob can help you maintain superior brand quality, even when it’s done outside of your four walls.

We offer several different packaging options and partners, so you can design a custom box orpoly mailer with inserts that will keep your customers delighted and coming back for more. 

Subscription order management

One of great things about health and nutrition subscriptions is that it helps people stay on top of their health routine. For the brand, subscription orders are a great way to not only get your customers to convert but also to lock in recurring revenue and increase customer lifetime value (LTV). 

By implementing asubscription box or recurring orders model, you can ship products to your customers on a regular, predetermined basis.

With ShipBob’s easy integrations, merchants can easily connect their online store to ShipBob’s technology and leverage subscription apps (e.g., ReCharge, Bold Subscriptions, etc.), or use ShipBob’s Developer API. 

Distributed inventory

By partnering with a 3PL that offers a network of international fulfillment centers, you have the option to split inventory across multiple locations.

Utilizing fulfillment centers in different regions can reduce shipping costs and transit times. Our technology automatically routes each order to thefulfillment center that’s closest to the shipping destination for the most efficient delivery.

International shipping

Shipping across the country is one thing, but shipping across the globe can be a greater challenge. Scaling internationally can enable your business to grow at speeds faster than in your home market, and allow you to build a global customer base. ShipBob takes this into account, and can advise you on how logistics can help you scale faster overseas. 

ShipBob has fulfillment centers across the globe and can ship orders to all countries where the major shipping carriers deliver to, and we also negotiate bulk discount rates with carriers to provide simple and affordableinternational shipping capabilities, such asDDP shipping services tofreight shipping. 

How ShipBob has helped health and nutrition companies

Health, beauty, and wellness businesses all over the world have seen the impact that partnering with a 3PL has made on their growth.

From offering affordable 2-day shipping, to creating a memorable unboxing experience, ShipBob offers a wide range ofretail fulfillment services, including the technology, fulfillment infrastructure,data and analytics, and partners needed to scale efficiently. 

Here’s what several of our health, beauty, and wellness customers have to say about partnering with ShipBob.

ZBiotics: a probiotic brand

ZBiotics is the world’s first genetically engineered probiotic in order to help people feel better the day after drinking alcohol. They leverage ShipBob’s Inventory Placement Program to better balance their inventory throughout the fulfillment network and get product into the hands of customers more quickly.

“My favorite thing about the Inventory Placement Program is that it takes the burden off of our team and it’s based on real-time calculations, giving us the right distribution by SKU at each fulfillment center. It’s comforting to know that we have a good balance between fulfillment centers on a day-to-day, week-to-week, and month-to-month basis, so our customers receive packages via the lowest shipping zone possible among the four ShipBob fulfillment centers we’re in across the US.

That ultimately helps us get products to our customers faster, giving them a great ZBiotics experience from start to finish.” 

Michael Mullaney, VP of Supply Chain at ZBiotics

Ample Foods: a meal replacement brand

Ample Foods combines the latest nutrition science with wholesome, real-food ingredients for a great-tasting complete meal replacement with optimal nutrition. Their products are made with a combination of meticulously-sourced natural, grass-fed, and organic ingredients.

Since fulfilling orders with ShipBob, they’ve been able to increase their 2-day ground shipping coverage by 103% and bring 13% savings to their bottom line.

“ShipBob has been a great partner as Ample has grown. ShipBob helps us offer new products to our customers with hardly any extra effort on our part. Our focus is to grow our business, and that will not be achieved by packing up orders, sending out boxes, and dealing with enormous carriers like FedEx and UPS ourselves. That’s what ShipBob has mastered.”

Pablo Gabatto, Business Operations Manager at Ample Foods

Bloom: a nutrition and wellness brand

Bloom’s protein powders, superfood blends, collagen boosters, and vitamins are packed with high-quality ingredients to help women bloom into their best selves.

With ShipBob supporting their fulfillment from the very start, Bloom has been able to expand into new sales channels, establish a global presence, and scale >$1M to 9 figures in sales. 

“Having quality fulfillment has only gotten more important as we’ve scaled. ShipBob is a sophisticated fulfillment solution, so they’re not intimidated by rapid growth. Not only do they know how to support massive order volumes, but they also know how to reduce fulfillment costs while doing it – a real win-win.”

Neil Blewitt, SVP of Operations at Bloom Nutrition 

Touchland: stylish and natural hand sanitizer

Touchland is a fast-growing brand that upgraded the hand sanitizing experience to a whole new level. The brand launched in 2018 and grew quickly after a successful Kickstarter campaign, and then grew even faster after the COVID-19 pandemic hit (they sold out the first week of the pandemic and 34,000 customers on the waitlist). They partnered with ShipBob to help get orders to customers faster by using our distributed fulfillment network.

“ShipBob has been a great ally as they have fulfillment centers all over the US, facilitating a 2-3 day delivery time for any customer in the US.”

Andrea Lisbona, Founder & CEO of Touchland

Juspy: a nutrient-dense food powder

Founder Juspy Leonie Lynch launched a nutrient-dense powder made with natural ingredients, no refined sugar, no stabilisers, and no additives. When her business grew, she soon felt overwhelmed by the time it took to pack and ship a high volume of orders herself. So she turned to ShipBob for help.

“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. ShipBob was the exact solution I was looking for.”

Leonie Lynch, Founder & CEO of Juspy

Getting started with ShipBob is easy

Fast-growing health and nutrition companies partner with ShipBob so they can spend less time on operations and more time on developing amazing products. You can learn more about the different services we provide and how we’ve helped businesses in this market scale at a faster rate by downloading our guide:Shipping Solutions for Health, Beauty, and Wellness Brands. 
Ready to get started with an 3PL? Fill out the form below to request a quote from ShipBob. A fulfillment expert will be in touch to discuss custom pricing and how ShipBob works.

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