Learn how pet supplement brand Pick Peanut switched to ShipBob and onboarded seamlessly, saved 50% on fulfilment in the first month alone, and now ships internationally with ease.
Customer Profile
Named after its founder’s rescue dog, Pick Peanut is a UK-based pet supplement brand dedicated to bettering our furry friends’ health, one microbiome at a time. Its conscientiously-sourced probiotic products feature premium, natural ingredients designed to support your dog’s digestive health and eliminate itchy ears and skin for good. Pick Peanut also donates a portion of each purchase to the Soi Dog Foundation to support the rescue, medical treatment, and adoption of street pets in Thailand.
Key metrics
- £1.5M in revenue since 2023
- £1.50 per order saved on shipments from the UK to the EU
- 50% cost-savings on fulfilment within the first month alone of ShipBob
- 3x less expensive fulfilment since switching to ShipBob
About Pick Peanut
When Ilya Andre’s beloved rescue dog Peanut started having health problems, he did what any good owner would do and started looking for a cure.
Ilya soon discovered the world of pet supplements and found that probiotics did the trick for Peanut. He quicky realized that, while there seemed to be a lot of false claims and poorly-created products out there, there was also a growing demand for good, thoughtfully-sourced pet supplements; and, entrepreneur that he was, he saw the opportunity.
Since it first launched as a simple probiotic supplement line, Pick Peanut has shipped over 1.5 million orders and expanded its product line to include anti-itch products and shampoos – all in just two years.
We sat down with Ilya Andre, Founder and Director of Pick Peanut, to discuss why the brand switched to ShipBob, and how it’s saved them money while improving their customer experience.
Ditching our old 3PL after surprise costs, broken promises, and shipping issues
As told to ShipBob by Ilya Andre, Founder and Director of Pick Peanut.
For the first few months we were in business, we were fulfilling orders ourselves. It was manageable at first but soon we were doing a thousand orders a month. The cons of keeping fulfilment in-house – specifically, taking the time and money to hire staff, expand our warehousing space, and build out more sophisticated operations – far outweighed the benefits. So, we started searching for a fulfilment provider that we could outsource to.
Before ShipBob, we initially partnered with a UK-based 3PL, and it was a terrible experience. I had never worked with a 3PL for DTC fulfilment before, so I didn’t know exactly what I was getting into, and the 3PL took full advantage of that. Once we started using their service, we were surprised by a ton of costs that the 3PL had never mentioned in our initial negotiations with them. It worked out to be a lot more expensive than expected – two or three times more expensive. It was a huge blow to our business’s profitability.
The 3PL also went back on their promises to us. Prior to signing the contracts, they assured us that we would be able to use a specific courier to ship orders; but after we onboarded, they told me that shipping through that courier was inefficient for them, and that they would be using a completely different one instead.
The rates may have been better for the 3PL, but the new courier’s service was awful for our business. It caused tons of issues for our customers, and the actual ticket management of all those issues became a huge slog for our customer service team, taking up so much of their time. Worse yet, hardly any of those issues were getting resolved – the 3PL would chalk it up to the courier, so we’d have to file a claim with the courier (which would never go anywhere, in my experience). Maybe one out of ten tickets would actually get addressed.
We ended up with a huge backlog of shipping problems to fix, and it started really impacting our customers. They would leave reviews praising the product, but expressing dissatisfaction with the delivery experience. That’s when I knew I had to find another fulfilment provider – our old 3PL was hurting our business, and we needed a partner that would help it thrive.
Onboarding to ShipBob seamlessly
Onboarding with ShipBob was incredibly smooth, and the ShipBob dashboard was super easy to adopt, too. I like that it’s simple – simple enough for pretty much anybody to be able to hop in and figure out. Because it’s so intuitive to navigate, we’re able to train people to use it very quickly, and the analytics and data it displays are quite comprehensive.
“As soon as ShipBob got ahold of our inventory (after our old 3PL held our inventory hostage for a huge cancellation fee), all our stock was moved and orders were getting fulfilled in literally two days. It was amazing how everything was processed so quickly! Any kinks were eliminated almost instantly, and no problems persisted. Switching to ShipBob has been so much better for our business.”
Ilya Andre, Founder and Director of Pick Peanut
Saving 50% on fulfilment in just one month with ShipBob’s transparent pricing and partnership network
ShipBob’s pricing has been so much better than our previous partner’s; after switching to ShipBob, we halved our fulfilment costs in just one month. On top of that, everything else has improved – customer satisfaction with shipping has increased significantly, and there are no issues with delivery. It’s not even a consideration for us anymore. ShipBob’s order accuracy and their ability to negotiate with couriers on our behalf has saved us so much time.
“When we ran the numbers, on paper, our old 3PL and ShipBob came out about even in terms of pricing. But our previous 3PL sprang all these extra little costs and fees on us, and they ended up being far more expensive. ShipBob, on the other hand, gave us transparent pricing, and our invoices have been very true to their initial quotes. Cost-wise, we saved 50% in our first month alone with ShipBob.”
Ilya Andre, Founder and Director of Pick Peanut
We’re also saving a lot of money on international shipments thanks to ShipBob’s partnership network within the broader ecosystem.
We ship to a lot of customers across the EU, which means our business needs an Import One Stop Shop (IOSS) number in order to streamline our VAT reporting and payment. Our old 3PL initially said that we could use their IOSS number for the purpose of efficiency, but then they surprised us by charging an extra £1.50 per order to do it. That’s about 25% of the cost of some of our fulfilment, and across hundreds of shipments, it adds up quick!
Our experience with ShipBob was completely different. ShipBob immediately put us in touch with their partner Avask, which serves as our VAT compliance expert. We were able to set up an IOSS within two weeks, and we’ve been shipping to the EU cost-effectively ever since.
Achieving tireless support that solves issues fast
All the support we’ve received from ShipBob has been so fast, so efficient, and so personal. There’s a level of care that we don’t see with suppliers and other service partners we work with that we get from ShipBob, with detailed effort always being put into fixing any problems that come up.
For example, we had a brief issue with EU customers having to pay customs duties even though we’re on IOSS, and we couldn’t figure out what was causing it because everything was going through fine on our end. Our account manager jumped right on it and worked tirelessly to figure it out, and was able to solve the problem. ShipBob’s support team is not only attentive, but also extremely persistent, and I don’t think we’ve had a single problem that’s not been addressed almost immediately.
What’s next for Pick Peanut
With ShipBob handling our fulfilment seamlessly, we have more time to focus on other priorities that will help us scale our business, like product development. We’ve got a few new products planned, and we’re excited to launch those and bundle them with our other products for an even better value. Eventually, we want to create more products that help with more niche problems for pets, and expand our business that way.
We’re scaling as fast as we can in the UK, but another area of focus is scaling the same offers across the world. Right now, we’re testing different international markets to see which are best for us and putting together a plan to grow globally, as well as working on getting stock into ShipBob’s fulfilment centre in the EU. There’s a huge market in Europe and we’ve already found that quite a few countries are profitable over time, so we’d love to continue to lean into those opportunities – and for ShipBob to help us do it!
Our goal is to scale to £1M a month in revenue by the end of the year. It’s a big goal – especially considering we donate a portion of each order’s revenue to animal charities and shelters – but with the right partners and the right priorities, anything’s possible for us.
Pick Peanut’s team at ShipBob
Matt Keen
Matt is the Account Executive who helped Pick Peanut get started with ShipBob.
Sergio Estevez
Sergio is the Implementation Manager who onboarded Pick Peanut to ShipBob.
Kathryn Mileham
Kathryn is the Merchant Success Manager at ShipBob who supports Pick Peanut.
Get started with ShipBob
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