Learn how toy vacuum brand Pick Up Bricks leveraged ShipBob as their fulfilment partner to navigate an influx of orders after being showcased on ABC’s Shark Tank holiday episode with orders being shipped in time for Christmas.
Customer Profile
Created by a mom of three, Pick Up Bricks is a kid-friendly vacuum that helps children clean up small toys like LEGO, puzzle pieces, and other objects that seem to be everywhere, all the time. Designed to separate toys from dirt and debris, the Pick Up Bricks vacuum not only creates a tidy space after playtime, but helps children learn (and love) how to clean.
Key metrics
- 1 SKU
- 2 ShipBob fulfilment centres used in the US
- 20x order increase after appearance on Shark Tank
- $200,000 for a 16% stake from ‘Sharks’ Mark Cuban and Lori Greiner
About Pick Up Bricks
As a mom of three young boys, Aurora Weinstock was all too familiar with the pain of stepping on one of her children’s small plastic toys. With LEGO and other small items strewn across the floor, Aurora began trying various methods to avoid stepping on the tiny toys.
Aurora tried cleaning up the blocks with her traditional vacuum, but the toy blocks got destroyed or intertwined with debris, leaving them unusable. She knew there had to be a better way to clean up the mess. That’s when she created the concept for Pick Up Bricks, a small vacuum specifically designed to pick up small children’s toys. The vacuum is equipped with a filter that separates dust, dirt, and pet hair from the toys, creating an easy and fun way for kids to pick up even the tiniest of toys.
Aurora wasn’t the only one who got on board with this idea. Eventually members of her family (including her brother-in-law, Steven Weinstock, who would become her co-founder), and even entrepreneurs from ABC’s Shark Tank, signed on to bring Pick Up Bricks to customers around the US.
We sat down with Steven Weinstock to learn more about how Pick Up Bricks landed on ShipBob as their fulfilment partner as they navigated a large influx in orders after their Shark Tank appearance.
Going from an error-prone 3PL to seamless fulfilment with ShipBob
As told to ShipBob by Steven Weinstock, Co-Founder of Pick Up Bricks.
As an entrepreneur that has started several businesses, I was approached by my sister-in-law, Aurora, about the concept for Pick Up Bricks. I thought it was a great idea. I understood her vision, and we worked together to find product designers, manufacturers, and other partners that could help us bring Pick Up Bricks to life.
She worked with manufacturers to create a prototype and I set up our Shopify site. Once we had our product in-hand, we didn’t know what to do with it logistically because we didn’t have a warehouse. I did some research and discovered something called a 3PL that would allow us to outsource fulfilment. Eventually, we partnered with a 3PL, but it ended up being a really bad experience.
We would receive bills from them that were incorrect, so we would have to meticulously go through each one and dispute the errors. Plus, they required a large fee to set up our Shopify integration. And even after we paid to connect our Shopify store, the integration was faulty and didn’t work as promised.
They also didn’t fulfil our orders correctly. Anything other than standard shipping for our 1 SKU would get screwed up, and I’d have to follow up asking what went wrong. Eventually, we decided we needed a new fulfilment partner if we were going to scale, so we started shopping around.
ShipBob was recommended through Shopify which made me think there would be a legitimate integration that worked, unlike the one through our previous provider. That was a deciding factor for me.
“There are so many things about ShipBob that make fulfilment simple for us. The integration with Shopify is seamless to set up and works really well. And the fact you can go into the ShipBob dashboard to see what’s going on in real time is great.”
Steven Weinstock, Co-Founder of Pick Up Bricks
The ShipBob support team has been great to work with when challenges arise. If I bring something up, they get right on it, and it’s resolved quickly and easily.
Experiencing 20x our typical order volume after appearing on Shark Tank – just before Christmas
When we found out we were going to be on Shark Tank, the contract said we couldn’t tell anyone ahead of time. We could only announce it publicly three weeks before the air date. The thing was, they couldn’t confirm when the air date was going to be, so there was no way for us to prepare.
There were a lot of Christmas decorations on set so we assumed it would be their holiday episode. We looked back at previous holiday episodes and found the timeframe when they went live. That helped us narrow down a few dates and made us 95% sure of when it would air.
So, we arranged an order with our factory to have 6,000 more units than normal. That way we would be ready, just in case. Then we told ShipBob, “Hey, we have a promotion coming up. We can’t tell you what it is but on December 8, we’re going to have a big publicity event and we expect a significant spike in sales.”
The episode aired on a Friday night and our Shopify store blew up. It was just like a scene out of the movies. I kept getting sales notifications on my phone – ‘ding, ding, ding, ding, ding!’ All I could think was, ‘Oh no, now I’m going to have to deal with all of these orders. I’ll have to make sure they’re correct and that they’ll ship out on time.’
“By Sunday night, we had over 1,300 orders. I looked at the list of orders that were piling up, just wondering if they would ship in time for the holidays. At the end of the day on Monday, I checked the ShipBob dashboard and saw that all of the orders from the weekend had been processed. That immediately made me a big ShipBob fan.”
Steven Weinstock, Co-Founder of Pick Up Bricks
This was a huge relief for us. The last holiday season, we were with our previous 3PL, and it took them over 2 weeks to process orders. Those orders weren’t getting delivered so we had to send replacements via overnight shipping. And even then, many of them didn’t get delivered in time for Christmas. So partnering with ShipBob this year was a major reassurance.
What’s next for Pick Up Bricks
Our plan for next year is to keep the momentum going and capitalise on our Shark Tank appearance. That experience really validated us and what we’re doing. People love the product and we’re happy that it’s making cleaning fun for kids.
We’ve been leveraging ShipBob’s automated FBA prep solution. Doing manual FBA prep is always a nightmare, so we’re really happy to streamline the process for selling on Amazon as well.
To make Pick Up Bricks even more available, we want to expand into B2B and explore a few international markets. We’re in talks with some big box retailers that we hope will help us elevate the total units we can sell in a year. We’re glad to have ShipBob as our global, omnichannel fulfilment partner that can support our growth.
Pick Up Bricks’ team at ShipBob
Richie Miller
Richie is an Account Executive at ShipBob. He helped bring Pick Up Bricks onboard with ShipBob.
Aravinthan S
Aravinthan is the Merchant Implementation Specialist that helped Pick Up Bricks get set up with ShipBob.
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