Client Name: Bryson
Backstory of the client:
Bryson from the United States and owns skincare brands, selling mainly in the United States, Australia, the United Kingdom, and Canada.
Initial situation before starting to work with us:
He had been doing eCommerce for more than 2 years. In beginning he started with AliExpress dropshipping and reached a level that he found order fulfillment was overwhelming and he could not scale his sales.
Problem he was encountering:
To release his hands from order fulfillment, he worked with a 3PL in China for warehousing and order fulfillment. However, when he got more sales, he often had situations where products would go missing or customers would tell him that they received the wrong product. Eventually, he found out the root cause was that the 3PL didn’t use barcodes to input inventory into the warehouse. Instead, they just manually counted each one. And the 3PL was hard to communicate due to the language barrier. So, the problems could not be solved on time and impacted on his customer retention rate.
Another thing that was really challenging was fulfilling orders for his global audience. The 3PL in China has a few shipping options and high shipping costs to ship his products to the countries that he was targeting at. And he often needed to deal with duties and taxes by himself which was particularly difficult.
The strategy and solution that we provided him to solve the issues:
A friend of him uses E-commerce Express, so when his friend knew he was having trouble in logistics area, he connected him with us. We had a few strategic calls to understand his business and the challenges that he was facing. Basically, the main points that we agreed on were:
- All his products would be sent to our warehouse for preparation before he started with the marketing promotions, and they would be 100% inspected and barcoded before being put into the warehouse. The barcode on the stock would be used to ensure that the right item would be sent out by scanning.
- We integrated our ERP with his Shopify store and retrieved his orders daily. Our fulfilment center helped him process his orders within 24 hours automatically. This increased the effectiveness and efficiency of order processing. And once the orders were fulfilled, the tracking numbers would be automatically synchronized to his store and the notifications wouldbe sent to his customers accordingly. The automation helped him avoid human mistake to the greatest extent and absolutely released him from the backend operation so that he could focus on other important things such as marketing strategy, market positioning, branding, etc.
As his skincare products are standard sizes and not fragile, it is very suitable to ship from China to his global audience. We provided him 3 different Express Lines which were level-1, level-2, and level-3 in terms of different level of delivery times and shipping costs. With the Express Lines, the fastest delivery time was 4 working days after the orders were processed and the longest delivery time was just 15 working days to the markets that he targeted at. So, he could offer his customers different delivery times according to their demands.
- Since the US and Australia are his main markets and the general delivery times to the 2 countries are between 8~15 working days. He sold more than hundred orders per day and during the Christmas it would be going crazy. So, he really wanted to shorten the delivery times to 2~5 working days. Luckily when he started to work with us it was in Oct., and we had enough time to prepare his stock and send them to our Los Angeles and Sydney warehouses to catch up a marketing promotion for the Christmas and new year.
- He needed prompt and smooth communications throughout the whole backend operation from sourcing to order fulfilment. For the communication, we have a communication app for each client, and we created a dedicated communication channel for him and his team with the app and brought team communication and collaboration into one place so we could get the work done efficiently and effectively. Every request from him wouldbe answered as instantly as possible and no more than 24 hours as an SLA (Service Level Agreement) even though we were in different time zones.
- We also assigned him a project manager to take care of the backend preparation before and after his marketing promotion. The way that he pumped up his online sales were through Instagram Influencer Marketing Strategy, whenever he was doing promotions, his sales would increase enormously. So, he needed to do good preparation for his backend. We assigned him a dedicated account manager. He was the single point of contact and saved him from the hassles of dealing with an ever-changing series of people. He oversaw all the activities on his account, organized and carried out all his orders, answered any questions about his fulfillments and inventory, and solved any problems that might arise.
Results Generated:
Bryson has a small team. When he started to sell online and ship globally, logistics could get quite difficult to him. He had experienced from AliExpress dropshipping to working with an outdated 3PL. Nothing could work out until he found a way out with us. E-commerce Express has been a great partner in streamlining order fulfillment and has allowed him to continue to scale. Since he began to work with us, he could take his supply chain for granted and concentrate on conducting his business and scale us as rapidly as he wanted. He worked closely with his account manager assigned by us and always made a good plan for his marketing promotions. He enjoyed the easy English communications and professional services. As he said, “They have been trustworthy from the start, very diligent, orders arrive on time with really high standards, they are a big part of our growth”. After 6-month cooperation, he could make from 5 figures per month to over 7 figures per month.