How Wholesome Goods Reduced Delivery Times by 50% with ShipBob for 7 of their Portfolio Brands [Case Study]

Learn how Wholesome Goods leverages ShipBob’s fulfilment solutions to provide fulfilment for the 7 brands under their umbrella.  

Key metrics

• 7 brands under 1 parent company 
• 3,000 SKUs fulfilled by ShipBob 
• $1M in revenue in the first 6 months of launching each brand (on average) 
• 5 US ShipBob fulfilment centres 
• 50% reduction in delivery times by distributing inventory across ShipBob’s fulfilment network 
• Thousands of dollars saved each month using IPP 

About Wholesome Goods

Wholesome Goods is redefining the direct-to-consumer model. 

Instead of offering one set of products in one vertical, Wholesome Goods is a collective of brands specializing in various industries. The company was born out of the idea that they wanted to be able to create quality products in different niches that they could inject into the ecommerce market quickly.  

Wholesome Goods incubates an idea for a product line, manufactures it, and introduces it to the market in six months or less. While this may seem incomprehensible to many ecommerce brand operators, Wholesome Goods has seen an incredible return on their model. Most of the brands they launch produce around $1M within the first six months on the market and continue to grow. 

Wholesome Goods proudly keeps its operations and marketing in-house. They initially ran their own warehouse with software they created themselves. However, they decided that to scale, they needed to leverage an outsourced fulfilment partner to help them keep up with their growing demand.  

Learn how Wholesome Goods went from having logistics be a bottleneck to their growth, to using ShipBob WMS in their warehouse, and finally outsourcing all of their fulfilment to ShipBob to offload their entire order volume for their family of brands. 

From investing in custom-built software and 55k sq.ft. of warehouse space to turning to a supply chain expert 

As told to ShipBob by Cesar Contreras, Head of Supply Chain of Wholesome Goods.  

Back in 2019, Wholesome Goods did most of its fulfilment through Amazon and we began toying with the idea of either outsourcing fulfilment or bringing it in-house.  

We moved our headquarters in Florida to a new building, which included 5,000 sq.ft. of warehouse space, so we decided we would fulfil orders from there. We built out packing stations and had our in-house programming team develop our own software, which we called QuickShip. 

After we surpassed 1,000 orders per day from that small facility, we decided we needed a larger space. Since we were receiving a lot of containers from overseas, we wanted to have a warehouse on the West Coast. That’s when we opened a 50,000 sq. ft. warehouse in Nevada. By then, we were fulfilling almost 3,000 orders per day from both of our facilities, plus using Amazon for FBA.  

We’d caught our stride with fulfilment but knew that our warehouse in Florida wasn’t great for us location-wise. So, we began looking at facilities in Georgia. We were really close to acquiring space in Georgia when I took a step back to really reconsider how this was going to work long-term.  

We knew we’d eventually need to expand into the Midwest if we wanted to become more efficient with shipping and continue to cut shipping costs. Plus, we would have to staff each warehouse and have a dedicated HR team with HR tools at each facility – it was too much overhead and too much work. Logistics was becoming the bottleneck for our company’s growth.  

We tried negotiating with different couriers for better rates, and even though we’d reached 50,000 shipments per month, it wasn’t enough. Even if we could have gotten to 100,000 shipments per month, we weren’t going to be able to negotiate a better rate than what a truly great fulfilment partner could offer us.  

“It had taken us almost a year to build our Nevada warehouse correctly. We’d taken on a huge investment to get it where it was, and even then, it still wasn’t optimised enough. Replicating that in new warehouses wasn’t going to be sustainable for us. 

That’s when we decided to look for a fulfilment partner that would allow us to use their WMS and their warehouses. When we found out ShipBob could offer us access to their ever-growing fulfilment network and WMS, we thought that it was the right combination for us.”  

Cesar Contreras, Head of Supply Chain of Wholesome Goods

Adopting a scalable fulfilment network and WMS in a single partner for better customer experiences 

When we implemented ShipBob WMS in our Nevada warehouse, we saw how well it worked compared to the software we created. It helped us a lot with inventory.  

Previously, we were having so many issues with not seeing where inventory was so the ShipBob WMS gave us greater inventory visibility. Additionally, the software helped us improve picking accuracy, inventory counts, and forecasting.  

As we began using ShipBob’s fulfilment centre in Georgia, we decided it didn’t make sense for us to continue using our Florida warehouse, so we ended up closing it down. Once we did that, we decided to expand with ShipBob into the Midwest and Southwest using one of their Illinois and Texas fulfilment centres. 

Our company’s final remaining warehouse was in Nevada, just a few blocks from ShipBob’s Nevada fulfilment centre. We decided to place inventory into ShipBob’s nearby facility, so we rented a U-Haul and had a driver deliver our inventory.  

At that point, we had fully outsourced our entire fulfilment operation to ShipBob and were using our Nevada facility as a distribution warehouse only. That meant we had all of our incoming shipments sent to our warehouse, and from there we’d distribute it to ShipBob or Amazon, thinking it would save us on storage costs.  

In reality, we were touching the inventory multiple times: We’d have to receive the product into our warehouse, palletize it, and ship it to ShipBob, which meant we were paying for each shipment, double receiving, and labour. 

Earlier in the year, the ShipBob team told us about their Inventory Placement Program (IPP), which requires one shipment to a ShipBob Hub and they do the rest. We immediately thought, “That’s interesting, let’s try that,” since the way we were receiving didn’t make sense and this would save us so much time and money. 

Once we got IPP up and running, it became clear that our old receiving processes were obsolete, and it didn’t make sense for us to have our own warehouse anymore. Using ShipBob’s fulfilment centre network and IPP made much more sense for us. 

The fact we’re able to add inventory and fulfilment centres in different regions using IPP to make sure customers get their orders fast has greatly improved our customer service and customer experience.  

“In the world of ecommerce, making sure the customer has a good experience is a top priority. We want to do everything we can to ensure a customer will continue to order from us, so we must impress them. We do that by using ShipBob for fulfilment because they receive and fulfil orders on-time, provide communications about tracking, and offer speedy delivery. ” 

Cesar Contreras, Head of Supply Chain of Wholesome Goods

When we were shipping orders from our warehouse, orders were delivered in 5 to 6 days. With ShipBob, we’re averaging around 3 days. The fact that ShipBob works with so many different couriers to ensure customers are getting their orders quickly is a great benefit for us. 

One of my favorite things about ShipBob is the visibility, one example of which is receiving a breakdown of how much it costs to fulfil each of our items.  

ShipBob uses a Cubiscan, so they have the correct measurements of each product. From there they say, “Based on these dimensions, this specific product mix will be packed in this specific box size. Here is the rate.” So, by that system, we know that one of our bottles is going to cost us let’s say $4 to pick, pack, and ship. 

Managing a diverse set of products across 7 brands through one partner 

There are a lot of products under the Wholesome Goods umbrella. We have a diverse group of products – some items are fragile, some products are ingested – some are for humans, some are for animals. We also have bulky items that tend to be heavier.  

Managing fulfilment for all of these different types of products wasn’t something that was going to be sustainable for us on our own. While we probably could have figured out how to do fulfilment on our own, it’s a relief to have the right partner in place.  

“When we decided to give up fulfilling orders on our own, we gave up a lot of control. But once we knew that we could trust ShipBob, we were okay with that. ShipBob has made it where we no longer have to worry about logistics. We trust ShipBob with our fulfilment.”  

Cesar Contreras, Head of Supply Chain of Wholesome Goods

Having ShipBob distribute and rebalance our 3k SKUs to reclaim time and money 

Because of the nature of our company, we don’t have one or two SKUs, we have 3,000. Before IPP, we had a team of 3 people who were focused on distributing products correctly within the ShipBob network. In order to do that, we had to have a good understanding of the sales velocity in each region. They had to pay close attention to how stocked each warehouse was. Because if you don’t distribute products correctly, orders are going to ship from a farther warehouse which is going to cause longer transit times and cost more money.  

“It was time-consuming for us to distribute and rebalance inventory on our own. With IPP, we can send products to one location and then ShipBob’s algorithms and technology use our historical order data to replenish inventory to each facility. That removes the responsibility from us. We can send inventory to one facility and then forget about it.”  

Cesar Contreras, Head of Supply Chain of Wholesome Goods

When we first got started, we checked how ShipBob’s IPP was distributing our inventory based on the models we created when we did distribution in-house – they were on point. ShipBob’s machine learning data works. They took a container with 1,000 SKUs and knew exactly which inventory needed to go to which facilities.  

On top of time savings, we were able to realize cost savings because we didn’t have to make any inventory transfers. We send our inventory to ShipBob once, they receive it, and they distribute it across their US network. We’re saving thousands of dollars each month by using IPP.  

Receiving white-glove support and forward-thinking innovations to help us move product faster, sell on more channels, and optimise our supply chain 

Logistics is always going to have some issues where things go sideways. So, I love that we have a dedicated support team at ShipBob and we can reach out via email, phone call, or chat to talk with someone who knows us. Our team at ShipBob is ready to jump in with any problems that we have.  

“I’ve worked with other fulfilment companies in the past, and ShipBob does a good job of managing expectations. Plus, it’s one of the reasons we trust ShipBob – because we know that we have people that we can talk to in case a problem comes up.”  

Cesar Contreras, Head of Supply Chain of Wholesome Goods

ShipBob always listens to our recommendations and feedback to continually improve. We, along with other merchants, love to see that ShipBob is able to fix things quickly. 

For example, ShipBob took merchant feedback about receiving and built out hubs that focus solely on receiving. That was a fantastic idea. I’m also excited to see them beta-testing Amazon Seller-Fulfilled Prime. If we don’t have to send products to Amazon, that will be a huge win for us. 

A lot of fulfilment providers don’t have EDI integrations, which are necessary for our retail relationships with Chewy and Wayfair, but complicated. We’ve had our fair share of obstacles, but ShipBob was able to brainstorm solutions and come up with creative workarounds. The communication was always very open and positive.   

ShipBob continues to innovate and think about how they can remove logistics barriers that brands are facing. ShipBob is thinking about things that other fulfilment providers aren’t. We continue to go to ShipBob’s annual merchant event, Fulfilled, so we can provide feedback and see what new products and processes ShipBob is rolling out. Not only is it fun, but they take the feedback very seriously. 

“ShipBob does a very good job of removing supply chain obstacles from our day-to-day, so we can spend our time increasing brand value, selling more, and optimising. I want to work on creating efficiencies, not worrying about logistics. Even though my background is in logistics, we’ve done a really good job partnering with ShipBob and leveraging them as fulfilment experts. That way we can focus on everything else.” 

Cesar Contreras, Head of Supply Chain of Wholesome Goods

What’s next for Wholesome Goods  

We’re focusing on taking our brands that perform really well in the US and expanding them into the UK, Europe, and Australia by exploring international options with ShipBob.  

And instead of adding new brands in the US, we’re going to start the conversation with retailers like Walmart and Target. We’re looking forward to how we can continue to grow with ShipBob by our side.   

Wholesome Goods’ team at ShipBob

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