How One $20 Million Brand Scaled Fulfillment from Their Own Large Warehouse to ShipBob

Learn how one $20 million brand went from operating a large warehouse themselves to outsourcing fulfillment to ShipBob just in time for the holidays.

Key metrics:

• $20 million in sales before partnering with a 3PL
• 10% compounded growth month-over-month
• 8,000+ orders fulfilled by ShipBob over BFCM weekend
• 2,500 orders fulfilled on a single day by ShipBob

ShipBob partnered with a brand that was growing fast. Really fast. After launching two years prior, they hit the $20 million-mark in annual sales and finally decided to move ecommerce fulfillment from their own warehouse to a 3PL.

We sat down with the Head of Operations of the company to hear more about their explosive growth and how they transitioned from in-house fulfillment to ShipBob.

[Editor’s note: This brand really wanted to share their partnership with ShipBob but asked to remain anonymous.]

Preparing for a massive Black Friday/Cyber Monday weekend

Last fall, our ecommerce business was at maximum capacity. We were experiencing 10% compounded growth month over month and had a major Black Friday/Cyber Monday sale that was quickly approaching with anticipated volume we wouldn’t be able to handle ourselves.

We were doing all fulfillment in-house, and having the space available to fulfill a rapidly increasing volume of orders wasn’t in the cards for us.

We didn’t know how we were going to fulfill what we estimated to be about 5,000 orders that weekend. We needed a partner that would not only help up with our fourth quarter growth we were experiencing but also fulfill those products on a long term basis. After a $20 million year, there are extremely high expectations for our growth moving forward.

We needed to make a fairly quick decision to find a fulfillment partner. Thankfully we came across ShipBob, and everything really fell into place.

“We found the right partner in ShipBob, who fulfilled more than 8,000 packages over a 4-day sale very quickly and gracefully, and we continue to see ShipBob having the capabilities of fulfilling over 2,500 packages a day for us.”

Moving over tens of thousands of units to ShipBob’s fulfillment centers within 30 days was a bit terrifying, having never done that before, but a great experience. The integration process of getting started with ShipBob was one of the most seamless transitions. They are very used to the startup culture.

As someone who handled the majority of our integrations, plug-ins, and ecommerce tools on our WooCommerce site, I can say that moving all of our orders from one shipping solution to ShipBob was by far the easiest integration that I’ve experienced, and it continues to be the easiest platform that I work with on a day-to-day basis.

“The transition to ShipBob also helped us refocus our in-house efforts. In our business, we have two main divisions — ecommerce and wholesale. By turning over our entire ecommerce fulfillment to ShipBob, it allowed our entire ecommerce fulfillment team to focus on wholesale, which has been a rapidly growing part of our business.”

This gives us the flexibility of having big ecommerce sales and other unplanned spikes in demand that will be covered by ShipBob, while our team can process wholesale orders as quickly as ShipBob ships orders to our ecommerce customers.

Meeting customer expectations in the age of Amazon

As consumers, we love how quickly Amazon delivers orders, but as a business, it can be hard to live up to those expectations. We not only want to be a company that’s providing high quality products in the US, but we also want to get our products to our customers in a timely fashion.

As a business that’s scaling, figuring out how to live up to these expectations was not easy for us to do until we came across a solution like ShipBob. The fact that ShipBob has fulfillment centers nationwide gives us Amazon-like speeds when getting packages to our customers.

ShipBob’s done an amazing job of fulfilling orders within a 24-hour period, which was something that our customers were used to. I can’t say that all shipping solutions would be that diligent in getting packages out the door.

“ShipBob has made sure that our customers are experiencing the same service as when we were fulfilling orders in-house, and one of the things that our company has always been best known for is the customer experience, which means there are very high customer expectations.”

Scaling for the future with the right partner

Before ShipBob, we were unable to forecast properly when it came to inventory demand and projections.

“ShipBob has been with us, step by step, in creating new solutions to predict what our growth over the next few months will be. A lot of other 3PLs would just leave it to our team to figure it out, but ShipBob has been an integral part of helping us forecast so that we can continue to provide the best customer service and shipping.”

ShipBob has always been able to adapt to our growth and has really become a partner of ours since day one. The customer success team that I’ve worked with has always been at my beck and call to answer any questions I have.

Having a dedicated Account Manager has really helped, serving as a liaison between our very large business and ShipBob’s fulfillment team. They consistently bring things to my attention and are always one step ahead of the game.

“ShipBob’s value is the ability to scale across the country, with fulfillment centers throughout the US and the ability to send out more packages than we are able to in-house. ShipBob is an excellent solution for businesses that are looking to grow and scale.”

We are excited to have a partner in the space that could actually grow with us.

Learn more about ShipBob

Warehousing can be a time-consuming process, and it can cost you. For instance, logistics warehouse tenants can expect to see a 10% rate hike starting in 2021, due to a high demand for warehouse expansion and construction.

ShipBob offers logistics solutions beyond warehousing that save you time and money.

Request a pricing quote from ShipBob to start the conversation on whether we’d be a good fit for your business.

Have your own warehouse? Get a WMS

ShipBob has a best-in-class warehouse management system (WMS) for brands that have their own warehouse and need help managing inventory in real time, reducing picking, packing, and shipping errors, and scaling with ease.

With ShipBob’s WMS, brands can even adopt a hybrid fulfillment model, employing ShipBob’s WMS technology in their own warehouses while simultaneously leveraging ShipBob’s fulfillment services in any of ShipBob’s fulfillment centers across the US, Canada, Europe, and Australia to improve cross-border shipping, reduce costs, and speed up deliveries.