In this story
Imagine this: You’ve just successfully launched your new product and you’re literally inundated with orders. Your heart is beating with adrenaline, you feel elated with each new order that seems to just magically appear in your order management system.
There’s just one catch: You’ve never shipped customer orders before and you’re not sure what the most effective way to do this is. To avoid disappointing your customers, you work for hours manually inputting addresses and writing them on delivery satchels. Suddenly the best day ever has turned into a day of frantic order processing and extreme stress…
This may sound like a nightmare, but it’s actually a very real reality for many new business owners today.
The use of accurate, relevant data when running a successful ecommerce business could not be more crucial as it is in today’s retail economy.
Not only does poor data management hinder productivity, but poor data quality is also a direct contributor to failed business initiatives and stress!
This case study outlines how Petite Cosmetics, one of the world’s fastest growing cosmetics labels, kicked the headache caused by manually fulfilling and managing domestic and international orders to the curb.
Petite Cosmetics exploded onto the make-up scene in 2017, filling a market that was screaming for product innovation. Eyelashes specifically designed for hooded or smaller eye shapes, and 100% animal cruelty-free, the savvy cosmetics brand was quickly inundated with orders from all over the US.
New business owners will be nodding their heads in agreement. Learning to ship orders, let alone shipping to multiple countries all at once is really tough.
We had so many orders and it was our launch day, and our biggest issue was that we had to manually copy and paste every single address field.
Tina Young, founder of Petite Cosmetics
See how Petite Cosmetics were able to seamlessly extract address data from Shopify orders and import it into Shippit to save time, and reduce order fulfilment errors:
The challenge: manual address data entry
It was a nightmare!
Patrick from the team at Petite Cosmetics said that he could only handle one or two days of manual fulfilment before reaching out to Shippit. But before we get to that, let’s look at some of the other challenges the new cosmetics brand faced:
Spreadsheets
The dreaded S word. Most business owners have a love/hate relationship with their infinite cascades of data festooned columns and rows. But when it comes to tracking orders in a spreadsheet, they are, quite literally, a nightmare.
Those who currently use this process will empathise, it’s a difficult and painstaking process exporting information from different systems, copy/pasting information into spreadsheets, fiddling with rows and fields…..this isn’t what businesses owners think of doing when they start going to market with their awesome products.
Fulfilment time
Petite Cosmetics would take at least 6 hours to copy over address information for their orders.
We didn’t have an automatic, streamlined way to extract the address information into DHL, I spent half the day getting the addresses right
Delivery rates and times
Petite Cosmetics requires hassle-free international shipping because their customer base is well-spread across the US.
Knowing this before going to market, they were looking for courier services that had good rates but were also flexible with their delivery times.
Before we launched I looked at other options, like Australia Post, and the rates were not a good as Shippit’s and the delivery times weren’t that good.
The solution: seamless data management with Shippit
Many new business owners get into the habit of importing and exporting sales data into their automation systems. But the beauty of Shippit is that our platform will do it automatically for you, totally eliminating the need to manage complex spreadsheets.
From 6 hours of fulfilment time to 20 minutes
Fast-forward nearly two years, and Petite Cosmetics have long said goodbye to their old, inefficient ways of inputting address information. Shippit has given them a comprehensive solution that’s saved them over five and a half hours every day.
“The best thing about it is that I don’t even need to import anything and the logic and filters tell me if the address is wrong.”
Delivery rates and times
Using Shippit has given Petite Cosmetics the peace of mind to step away from finding cheap and fast couriers all the time because now they can step away and let the platform do the heavy lifting for them.
I know what I spend, and I know what the offering is from competitors, and Shippit is still cheaper and easy to use.”
Easy fulfilment for domestic and international orders
Another amazing benefit to Petite Cosmetics is the headache-free way in which Shippit manages domestic and international orders. All the shipping decision making and thinking are done for them, and as a result, they save time and energy with it being in one place:
It was really good to have all the carrier information in one centralised spot.
More time to focus on customers
Saving so much time in the day that was previously spent fulfilling orders is now spent on Petite Cosmetics customer enquiries.
Shippit’s essential – I wouldn’t know how to manage without it – it saves so much time. You need it to free up time in order to focus your energy into more value-added parts of your business.
The wrap
Petite Cosmetics is a savvy cosmetics label that was able to tap into a growing market, but they wouldn’t have been able to manage to fulfil their orders if they kept spending 6 hours a day copy/pasting address information.
Since switching to Shippit, Petite Cosmetics has slashed their fulfilment time to 20 minutes a day, they’re able to fulfil domestic and international orders without any headaches, and they get the best shipping rates and times.
What Petite Cosmetics love about Shippit:
- Ease of use and even easier to set up
- Syncing address information in one central location
- Effortless shipping for both domestic and international orders
- Cheaper shipping rates and fast delivery times
- Saving time so Petite Cosmetics can focus on their customers
Sound too good to be true? Get in touch with our solution experts to see how we can help you take control of your deliveries too.
