Learn how outdoor baby brand IZIMINI leverages ShipBob’s fulfilment centres in Australia, America, and more to scale across the world.
Customer Profile
Founded by parents in Sydney who love the sun, sand, and ocean, and inspired by the joy of childhood, IZIMINI is a children’s brand that emerged from a search for baby outdoor lifestyle products that were simple, practical, and stylish. When they couldn’t find any, they made products themselves that keep your baby safe, entertained, and looking stylish outdoors with prints made by emerging Aussie artists. IZIMINI also donates 1% of its sales to less fortunate families via Mummies Paying it Forward.
Key metrics
- 70% growth YoY
- 2 ShipBob fulfilment centres: Australia and America
- 65 retail stores stocked with IZIMINI products
- 800+ 5-star reviews
Enjoying the outdoors is core to the Australian experience, and it starts at childhood. Whether it’s at the beach or park, camping or lounging in the backyard, children today should be able to have these experiences without screens. IZIMINI products make this possible for parents and their “minis” with easy-to-clean, comfy, and high-quality products that are lightweight and portable.
Born in Australia at the end of 2021, the idea started during lockdown when one family had more time available to go to the beach after their first daughter was born. During this unique point in time, they thought of cool accessories that would make new parents’ lives easier without feeling overwhelmed by the possibility of babies crawling everywhere.
They found the perfect sweet spot with chairs and matching products that take up little room to transport, make cleanup easy, and let trips outdoors be less of a hassle. And their customers agree — they already have 800+ 5-star reviews!
We sat down with the IZIMINI team, to hear how this outdoor baby accessories brand is scaling across the world, partnering with ShipBob to get products into customers’ hands.
Going viral while balancing being new parents and working
As told to ShipBob by the IZIMINI team.
We launched IZIMINI at the end of 2021 with 2 products: a chair and matching hat available in 2 patterns.
Within a couple weeks, Steph Claire Smith, a well-known model and parenting and wellness influencer, posted about it and we sold out.
At this point, we were packing and shipping orders ourselves from our home in Sydney.
But that early viral moment had us quickly realise it would be difficult to handle fulfilment on our own. Our products were out-of-stock a lot during the first 6 months, and we had a lot of pre-orders.
We had a storage facility nearby, where we would go to get boxes. We’d worked during the day, took care of our daughter, and then worked on the fulfilment side of the business, packing boxes, while she slept.
A few months later, we relocated inventory to a 3PL in Sydney. We started to grow the business into new markets like New Zealand, Hong Kong, and Singapore, created new products, signed with The Iconic, and started selling in more places. But we soon realised we needed more in a fulfilment provider.
Finding a global fulfilment partner to centralise logistics
We have demand for our products all over the world. We really wanted to launch in the US, which was one of the core reasons we decided to leave our old 3PL and move to ShipBob.
We were looking for 3PL that was international, so that when we started selling and stocking globally, we wouldn’t have to use multiple dashboards or have several different contacts across companies.
In March of 2023, we relocated our inventory to ShipBob. Onboarding was super easy, setting up integrations like Shopify and Klaviyo. We were in contact with our Account Executive, James, for months leading up to our start, and our Implementation Specialist, Ray, was super knowledgeable and very helpful. Our Merchant Success Manager, Mandira, who we work with today has been really on top of the different issues we may have.
We use ShipBob’s fulfilment centre in Melbourne and are about to launch in Las Vegas in the USA. We will continue to expand more and grow geographically. We want to launch in Europe next year, leveraging ShipBob’s expansive footprint.
“ShipBob is the right system for a brand that wants to scale across the world. Having inventory in different countries but only one dashboard and point of contact simplifies the process of global expansion.”
Improving inventory management through best-in-class tech
We love ShipBob’s technology. The dashboard is very intuitive. I like that we can create our own rules, such as adding marketing insertions to orders, which makes it super easy.
For each product, I can choose the packaging preferences and requirements, which is the same with retail preferences.
That’s what I like with ShipBob — there are lots of things I can do myself in the dashboard which wasn’t the case with my previous 3PL.
The integrations are also very good. For my Shopify store, I just sync it and my new products show up straightaway in ShipBob.
I like to look at the analytics in the ShipBob dashboard, knowing exactly what I have for storage. I can also set up alerts to know when I’m low on inventory for certain products to make replenishment easier.
The bundling process is really good. Before ShipBob we would do it with an Excel table, which was a lot to manage.
Enjoying cost savings with predictable fulfilment pricing
Before ShipBob, we weren’t completely satisfied with our 3PL. Communication with our 3PL before ShipBob was also bad. We didn’t like that our old 3PL’s pricing was too complicated.
The ShipBob dashboard makes the receiving process transparent, and the costs are very reasonable. We just prepare the paperwork/WRO, send it to the supplier, and track progress, making the inbound process super easy.
If I sent my old 3PL pre-ShipBob 2k hats, I would pay $2k just for receiving ($1 for 1 hat), because our previous 3PL would count every piece that would arrive at the warehouse, which made it very expensive (and also led to lots of human error).
Having 4 picks included in every DTC order with ShipBob also helps me not pay more every time there’s an extra pick needed. If I stayed with my old 3PL, I would have paid more than I do now with ShipBob.
“Before ShipBob, I had no idea what I was paying my 3PL. I like that the ShipBob pricing structure is so simple and clear, including picking, packing and shipping in one fee, along with 4 free picks per order.”
The B2B process with ShipBob saves me money, being able to ship an order as a whole case. Thinking about splitting inventory to other locations and countries can also help us save even more on shipping costs.
What’s next for IZIMINI?
With peak and summer seasonality coming up, we’re ready for an influx of thousands of more orders per month. This summer, we are launching new partnerships with other brands and exciting new product releases.
We’ve grown 70% over the last year, and aim to continue to grow as fast as we have in the past. We’re excited to take the US market by storm and then others as well.
Our objective is to become the worldwide reference of outdoor lifestyle for babies and toddlers, and ShipBob is really helpful to us in achieving this.
IZIMINI’s team at ShipBob
James Risos
James is the Account Executive who worked with the IZIMINI team to get started with ShipBob.
Raymond Neruwana
Ray is the Senior Implementation Specialist who onboarded IZIMINI to ShipBob.
Mandira Das
Mandira is the Sr. Merchant Success Manager at ShipBob who supports IZIMINI.
Get started with ShipBob
Looking into switching fulfilment partners or outsourcing fulfilment for the first time? Request a quote from ShipBob to get started.
