Why London-Based NutriPaw Chose ShipBob Over 12 UK Fulfillment Solutions [Case Study]

Learn how healthy dog treat brand NutriPaw found the true partnership they wanted in ShipBob.  

“Fulfillment is one of the areas that we were super keen to outsource to a partner who’s been doing it for a while and knows how it’s done. We can trust ShipBob to support and handle fulfillment for us, so that we can focus on the strategic side of our business, helping us grow and develop much faster.”

– Adelina Zotta, Co-Founder of NutriPaw

Key metrics

• 12 3PLs considered 
• 10X’d order volume in 3 years since starting with ShipBob 
• 30k orders shipped per month on average 
• 2 ShipBob fulfillment centers in the UK and the Netherlands
• Winners of Forbes 30 Under 30 Europe – Retail & Ecommerce in 2023

About NutriPaw

While COVID might have kept us from our loved ones, it only brought us closer to our pets. 

As global quarantines forced humanity to turn inward in search of companionship, millions of new pets were adopted and the pet supplies industry experienced an unprecedented boom in growth. 

Londoners Adelina Zotta and Connor Westby noticed the surge, and knew it was an opportunity they couldn’t miss. 

The two had wanted to start an ecommerce business together for some time, but were passionate about building a brand that positively impacted both humans and animals, rather than becoming just another pet supplies vendor. 

With the market widening and humans and animals alike in need of help, the timing was perfect.

Together, Connor and Adelina founded NutriPaw: a brand specifically designed to naturally address common canine health issues through delicious herbal dog treats. 

After introducing their first product designed to calm anxious dogs, they quickly released other treat varieties, including allergy-fighting, hip and joint wellness, and multi-action. Since then, NutriPaw has only continued to grow their product catalog, their order volume, and their global presence, with ShipBob as their fulfillment partner every step of the way.

We sat down with Adelina Zotta and Connor Westby to discuss outgrowing self-fulfillment, must-haves in a 3PL partnership, and getting started with ShipBob’s Manchester, UK fulfillment center.

Outgrowing self-fulfillment

As told to ShipBob by Adelina Zotta and Connor Westby, co-founders of NutriPaw. 

Since self fulfilling orders from our launch over a year ago, we reached a point where it became completely unsustainable for us to continue doing so. 

Our order volume has grown immensely since we started the business, to where fulfillment doesn’t leave time for us doing anything else.

At the scale we’re starting to operate at, keeping everything in-house would mean that we would be picking and packing orders all day!

We have even bigger ambitions for our business going forward, including launching new products and increasing stock. So we wanted to free up our time to focus on growing our business, and knew it was time to outsource fulfillment to experts.

“It was incredibly important to us to find a 3PL with which we could form a true partnership — not just another traditional vendor-client relationship. We wanted a partner that really understood what was important to us as a business, and that would be willing to go the extra mile to meet our needs.”

– Adelina Zotta, Co-Founder of NutriPaw

Finding a partner, not just a fulfillment service

I spoke to 12 different fulfillment companies of all shapes and sizes — but our conversation with our ShipBob representative was by far the best.

Out of everyone that we had spoken to, our conversations with him felt the most like a real partnership. 

He was extremely responsive, made sure to close the loop with us on all the questions we had, and guided us through optimal packaging decisions.

He even helped coordinate the move of our products from London to ShipBob’s Manchester fulfillment center!  

Altogether, ShipBob was able to provide us with the bespoke solution that we were looking for, and a sense of partnership we just couldn’t find anywhere else.

“One of our must-haves for a fulfillment solution was partnership. We wanted to partner with a 3PL that would be kind of like us: positive, relaxed, but also reliable. We really wanted a provider with whom we could form a relationship, where it wouldn’t just be based on numbers — and we found that with ShipBob.”

Adelina Zotta, Co-Founder of NutriPaw

Trusting in a track record of excellence

The UK is our home base, and all the customers we ship to are in the UK. We spoke to some classical, British-owned fulfillment companies in our search, but ShipBob turned out to be perfect for us. 

We had no concerns about ShipBob’s HQ being in the US — if anything, it was more of a positive!

ShipBob has done incredibly well in the US, and their track record reassured us that we can grow together with ShipBob as it ramps up its international operations. 

“ShipBob absolutely smashed it in the US! Because ShipBob has done very well in the US, we’re confident that it will do great over here with us as well.”

– Adelina Zotta & Connor Westby, Co-Founders of NutriPaw

As we got ready to launch with ShipBob, our implementation specialist made the onboarding process very simple and understandable.

It’s been super easy to log in to our dashboard and check on orders, too — there’s clearly been a lot of development that’s gone into making it such a smooth transition process. 

Getting stock to the Manchester fulfillment center has been smooth as well, thanks to ShipBob’s flexible receiving process and warehouse receiving orders, or WROs.

We don’t always know exactly when our inventory shipments will arrive from our suppliers, and other 3PLs told us they would reject our shipments if they didn’t arrive on a certain time and date. 

ShipBob is a lot more flexible because of their technology, and our representative helped explain how receiving works, which was a big plus.

Scaling order volume 10x in 3 years with ShipBob 

Since launching with ShipBob in February of 2022, NutriPaw’s growth has skyrocketed! We 10X’d our order volume, and now we’re regularly shipping over 30K orders per month, with even more during peak seasons – and that’s just counting our domestically shipped orders. 

We’ve also grown our product catalog and our brand recognition. Adelina and I were even winners of Forbes 30 Under 30 Europe for Retail & Ecommerce in 2023! It’s all been a bit of a whirlwind, and ShipBob’s partnership has been critical to achieving and supporting this scale.  

Leveraging ShipBob’s global fulfillment network to reach new customers 

After getting started in the UK, one of our biggest growth drivers has been entering new markets – especially those in Europe and the EU – which we’ve been able to do thanks to ShipBob’s global fulfillment network.  

We started storing inventory and fulfilling orders from ShipBob’s fulfillment center in the Netherlands about a year into our partnership, and it was a gamechanger. Getting set up in that facility was a very easy process, and the order volume scaled really quickly – we regularly see 4k shipments per month coming through that facility, which has been really good for the business.  

Expanding to ShipBob’s Netherlands fulfillment center also improved our shipping times for international customers. It’s been fantastic to scale our order volume and reach new customers without having any issues with increased lead times or delivery times, and we get significantly fewer “where is my order” inquiries from customers outside of the UK, especially those in Ireland. Ireland is our second biggest market in the EU, so the fact that ShipBob helps us provide a faster, smoother delivery experience for those customers is so valuable and helps us capture more revenue.  

Building customer loyalty and increasing LTV through quality fulfilment 

Another key growth lever for ecommerce brands is selling more products to the same customers – and to do that, you need a fulfillment and logistics partner that delivers the fast, accurate fulfillment that customers expect.  

ShipBob has been that partner for us. They’re able to receive our products in their fulfillment centers quickly and effectively, making sure that every unit is sorted in the correct place to prevent mispicks in the fulfillment process.  

A lot of our products are similar to each other, which could make picking tricky – but ShipBob’s system has built-in checks and balances that make sure that the right new products are getting out to the right customers. This not only minimizes errors and potential complaints, but also results a better customer experience that encourages them to repurchase from us.  

Using ShipBob’s FBA Prep solution to minimize lead times for Amazon orders 

We leverage ShipBob’s FBA Prep solution to prepare shipments of our products to Amazon, who handles our Prime orders. We keep our Amazon stock fairly lean, so having an expert partner like ShipBob, who acts as a central logistics hub, to turn FBA Prep orders around quickly for us and keep lead times down is super helpful. I know that I can submit an FBA Prep order and it will be packed and collected the same week – it’s been a huge relief.  

What’s next for NutriPaw?

With fulfillment and shipping outsourced to ShipBob, we can finally focus on expanding our product offering to better capture our customer needs. We try and launch at least one new product every quarter, so we’re constantly innovating and adding new health formulas to our catalog.  

Given how successful our initial expansion into ShipBob’s Netherlands facility has been with our best-selling SKUs, we’re also working on getting all of our SKUs into that fulfillment center, and potentially looking to expand into more markets as we keep scaling.  

The opportunity is really endless — and with ShipBob as our trusted partner, we’ll be able to keep helping the tons of dogs in the UK, and even eventually pets all over the world!

NutriPaw’s team at ShipBob

Jordan Altamuro

Jordan is the Implementation Consultant who onboarded NutriPaw to ShipBob.

Carlos Cardo Alcalde

Carlos is the Merchant Success Manager at ShipBob who supports NutriPaw. 

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