Table of Contents
** Minutes
Finding a supply chain partner that scales with you
Getting the details right for Walmart retail distribution across almost 4,000 stores
Leveraging ShipBob’s global network to better serve international customers
Automating inventory placement in the US to improve the customer experience
Gaining new insights into order status, tracking inventory, and other key data points
Discover how Dossier, the perfume house for the next generation, found a long-term fulfilment partner in ShipBob, enabling Dossier to pull growth levers like retail distribution, global fulfilment, and inventory placement to scale to millions of orders.
“Logistics is something you never think about until it stops working, and we’ve never come to that point with ShipBob. The services are excellent. Everything just works. We are super happy with ShipBob and very impressed by how well they’ve pumped out our large volume of orders.”
Sergio Tache, CEO of Dossier
Customer Profile
Dossier believes that premium fragrances should be accessible for everyone, not just the lucky few who can spend hundreds of dollars per bottle. That’s why they offer affordable scents — comparable to luxury ones on the market — without the markup. Their perfumes vegan and eco-friendly perfumes are cruelty-free, made with high-quality, 100% clean ingredients sourced from Grasse, France, the perfume capital of the world.
Key metrics:
- 2019: Opened their online store
- Millions of orders shipped since 2019
- Almost 4,000 Walmart stores supported by ShipBob
- 3-person fulfilment team
Dossier strives to craft perfumes that exceed expectations, use the same ingredients as top fragrance houses, and feature quality comparable to luxury scents – without the massive markups traditionally seen in the perfume industry.
Based in NYC with their manufacturing group in France, their high-quality perfumes start at $29 each, making them the must-have scent brand that’s a smart choice for your skin, health, and the environment.
Dossier was founded in 2018, opened their ecommerce store in April 2019, and have since sold millions of bottles of perfume.
We sat down with Dossier’s Founder and CEO, Sergio Tache, and Vice President of Operations, Ines Guien, to learn how this brand scaled from a startup to an ecommerce and retail powerhouse.
Finding a supply chain partner that scales with you
As told to ShipBob by Sergio Tache, Founder and CEO of Dossier.
When we were first getting started with Dossier, we were doing everything by hand manually. I shipped everything myself and made a lot of trips to the post office. It was intense and pretty tough. I reached a breaking point where fulfilling orders on my own wasn’t worth compromising my quality of life – and that’s when I found ShipBob.
ShipBob delivered on all the must-haves we needed back then as a startup – the pricing structure was competitive and very easy to understand, the services were excellent, and there were no long-term contracts required (even though we’re now in a long-term partnership with them).
Over the last several years, our order volume has increased tremendously, shipping millions of orders, expanding our sales channels to include Walmart and Amazon, and selling and shipping our perfumes worldwide. Scaling the business at such an extraordinary clip requires a tight supply chain partner.
“Growing so fast has really underscored for us the importance of having a partner that can scale as fast as you do. Scaling is great, but it also comes with certain headaches – and while it’s a good problem to have, you need a partner that can handle your volume, even as it’s skyrocketing to over a million orders. With ShipBob, that capacity was never in doubt – and that was huge for us.”
Sergio Tache, Founder and CEO of Dossier
We’ve been leveraging as many of ShipBob’s services and solutions as we can: their B2B solution, Inventory Placement Program, their global fulfilment network, and Amazon FBA prep. It’s been a big relief to have a partner that we can grow with and rely on. I’ve seen other companies with fulfilment partners that aren’t equipped to grow with them, and it becomes a nightmare and hurts their ability to grow efficiently.
Once you have a bottleneck in any part of the supply chain, having to deal with that can be very painful and ruin the whole business. So having complete confidence in ShipBob and the reassurance that they had the tools and expertise to scale up with us seamlessly was tremendously valuable.
Getting the details right for Walmart retail distribution across almost 4,000 stores
As told to ShipBob by Sergio Tache, Founder and CEO of Dossier.
Retail distribution with Walmart has had a tremendous impact on our revenue growth, and the quality and consistency we’ve seen with ShipBob’s B2B solution has enabled us to tap into this sales channel effectively.
In B2B, the details matter. We can put our best foot forward to get new B2B partners and wholesalers onboard, master our marketing and branding, do everything perfectly upfront – but if the logistics aren’t spot on, all our efforts are for nothing.
That’s why ShipBob’s B2B solution is so valuable – we can rely on ShipBob to get the nitty gritty operations right.
We know with ShipBob handling distribution across 4,000 Walmart locations, all our efforts to get an order won’t be destroyed by shipping and logistics issues.
“Logistics is something you never think about until it stops working, and we’ve never come to that point with ShipBob. Everything just works. We are super happy with ShipBob and very impressed by how well they’ve pumped out our large volume of orders.”
Sergio Tache, Founder and CEO of Dossier
I also love that we have a partner who we can really rely on to have everything with one partner and make sure that not only the DTC business is done properly, but also the B2B business. If I never hear the word “ShipBob” in any conversation I have with my team, that means things are going really, really well – and I rarely hear it. I think that speaks to the reliability of ShipBob’s service. You know things will get done – it’s as simple as that. Having that peace of mind is incredibly valuable.
“When it comes to fulfilment, DTC and B2B channels require different skill sets and have their own unique challenges, so a lot of brands end up juggling multiple different partners. Having just one omnichannel fulfilment partner in ShipBob who can handle these two very different aspects of the business is really important, and definitely makes our job easier.”
Sergio Tache, Founder and CEO of Dossier
Leveraging ShipBob’s global network to better serve international customers
As told to ShipBob by Sergio Tache, CEO of Dossier.
We’ve been utilising ShipBob’s fulfilment centres in the US, Australia, and Canada, and the UK. We also recently launched in Europe using ShipBob.
Shipping cross-border is never easy, especially when you’re shipping a product that qualifies as a dangerous good since our products contain alcohol.
By storing inventory in ShipBob’s facilities within the countries or near the geographies we’re shipping to, we can bypass a lot of the complexities of international shipping. It makes our lives significantly easier.
But more importantly, shipping locally instead of internationally is better for customers. You can always navigate cross-border complexities, but you can’t undo a customer’s stressful delivery experience.
Leveraging ShipBob’s global network to fulfil and ship locally reassures our customers, so that when someone in a key market like Australia or Canada buys from us, they’re not worrying about their order getting stuck in customs or wondering if they’ll ever get their items. They also know it’s not going to take two weeks or more to be delivered, and they don’t have to pay exorbitant international shipping rates.
Automating inventory placement in the US to improve the customer experience
As told to ShipBob by Sergio Tache, Founder and CEO of Dossier.
In addition to international customers, we also want to provide an excellent delivery experience for our US customers, and that means keeping delivery times to two days or less by distributing inventory strategically.
Through ShipBob’s Inventory Placement Program (IPP), we’ve been able to automate a lot of our inventory placement and regional distribution in the US.
IPP uses real order data to calculate the ideal distribution and replenishment of inventory across ShipBob’s network to minimise shipping costs and times.
My team uses that tool extensively. It helps them understand the potential gains of expanding to different warehouses, and how it could save time and money – it’s been really useful.
From there, our team sends all our inventory to one of ShipBob’s receiving hubs, and then ShipBob takes care of distributing those units to regional fulfilment centres across the US for us.
Placing inventory closer to customers using IPP has definitely helped lower our shipping costs, but just as importantly, it enhances the customer experience. If we were to ship from one fulfilment centre, it could take as many as 8 days to arrive to the other side of the country, and nobody wants that.
People are used to getting packages within 1-2 business days, so being able to fulfil each order from the fulfilment centre closest to the end customer and have that order shipped quickly from ShipBob has been extremely helpful.
Gaining new insights into order status, tracking inventory, and other key data points
As told to ShipBob by Ines Guien, Vice President of Operations at Dossier.
Overseeing logistics, product development, and day-to-day operations has me working very closely with ShipBob.
ShipBob’s dashboard is super intuitive and easy to navigate.
I love that you can view orders based on when they are processing, completed, on hold, and in other stages. It is super helpful for us to have that and track the order every step of the way.
“We have a Shopify store but do not use Shopify to track inventory. In terms of tracking inventory, we use ShipBob for everything — to be able to track each bottle of perfume, what we have left, and what we’ve shipped, while getting a lot more information on each order.”
Ines Guien, Vice President of Operations at Dossier
The analytics are super helpful. We download Excel files from the ShipBob dashboard all the time and use them to analyse everything from cancelations, to examining order weights, to checking on whether ShipBob is shipping orders on time. Even the way their warehouse receiving orders (WROs) work for sending inventory is very straightforward.
ShipBob saves us a lot of time by saving us a lot of headaches. Whenever an issue comes up, the resolution is quick, and we appreciate how they make things right.
Having a dedicated Merchant Success Manager is such an amazing help to us. It’s been so great having direct contact with the team, and our MSM is always there for us.
What’s next for Dossier
We’ve seen a ton of growth, and we’re not slowing down!
Wholesale has been such a needle-mover for us, and we’ve barely scratched the surface. We’re looking forward to adding more retail partnerships in the future to continue to bring our scents to customers wherever they shop.
We’re also looking to double down on expanding our geographic footprint, and we’re excited to expand into even more of ShipBob’s fulfilment centres both in the US and abroad.
In terms of product, we’re sticking to what we know we do best: making impeccably- crafted perfumes. We have two collections now, and with ShipBob supporting us operationally, we’ll continue to create high-quality fragrances at affordable price points to build the perfume house of the next generation.
Dossier’s team at ShipBob
Jessica St. John Meyers
Jessica is the Merchant Success Manager at ShipBob who supports Dossier.
Dhruv Saxena
Dhruv is the Co-founder and CEO of ShipBob, and serves as the Executive Sponsor for Dossier.
Get started with ShipBob
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