Case Study

38% Growth, Zero New Hires, and 11% Lower Shipping Costs: How a Designer Clothing Brand Scaled Fulfillment

Key Benefits and Outcomes

Cut overall shipping expenses by 11%

Scaled fulfillment to keep pace
with 38% annual growth

4% monthly lift in online sales by adding PO Boxes and APO/FPO delivery

5 hours saved per week shipping international
orders

Eliminated $0.50 return label fee

Unified domestic and international shipping into one workflow

The Challenge

After growing 38% the previous year, the brand needed to scale fulfillment quickly. Hiring more warehouse staff would relieve the pressure in the short term, but it would not fix the problem: a shipping operation with too many manual steps and clicks to keep up with demand.

International orders, which made up 15% of volume, shipped through a separate carrier that required a separate portal and a manual process with its own set of steps.

The apparel brand also wanted to lower shipping costs, which were one of its largest expenses, and sought more competitive rates. Since the brand used a single carrier for domestic eCommerce orders and another carrier for international orders, there was little room to lower per-package shipping costs. Additionally, the brand could not offer shipping to PO Boxes or APO/FPO addresses, a gap that was suppressing online sales.

That same domestic carrier charged $0.50 to generate every return label, whether the customer used it or not. Since the brand provides premium, tailored clothing, it includes a return label with every order. The brand had spent years trying to get the carrier to waive the fee, without success.

Leadership wanted a shipping solution that would unify domestic and international orders, reduce shipping costs, and enable the warehouse to fulfill more orders without adding staff.

“

ShipJunction has really allowed us to concentrate on other priorities; shipping and fulfillment is one less thing we need to worry about. We could not have grown as much without ShipJunction.

”

Director of eCommerce Designer Clothing Brand

The Solution

The brand replaced its disconnected, manual shipping process with ShipJunction, a multi-carrier shipping platform tailored to how the brand’s warehouse already operated. With every carrier in one system and far fewer clicks and manual tasks per order, the team could ship domestic and international orders in a fraction of the time.

During implementation, ShipJunction mapped how the team shipped orders, then consolidated and automated the decisions, clicks, and data entry that slowed them down. The warehouse team kept the processes it already knew, but with significantly fewer steps and clicks to pick, pack, and ship an order.

ShipJunction enables the team to process every shipment through a streamlined multi-carrier shipping workflow, whether it’s going to a residential, PO Box, or international address. The brand can use any carrier it has added to ShipJunction, and adding a carrier requires no new portal or training.

With multiple carriers integrated, ShipJunction’s shipping rules engine compares rates across carriers and services for every package, then automatically selects the best option based on the brand’s custom rules. ShipJunction automatically prints the shipping label with the correct packing slip and other documents required for international orders.

The Results

The brand scaled its operations to handle 38% growth, including seasonal spikes, without hiring additional warehouse staff.

“ShipJunction ended up producing more benefits than we originally anticipated,” says the Director of eCommerce. “What makes the service so valuable are the resulting improvements and practices that are derived from the software’s ability to provide insight and solutions into the nuances that go along with managing eCommerce shipments. It is not a ‘one-size-fits-all’ system that only operates in one manner; it’s a system that is suited to our needs.”

The brand also cut overall shipping expenses by 11% through two strategies: automated carrier and service selection, and a new approach to return labels. It kept its preferred carrier for outbound shipments, while ShipJunction generated return labels from an alternative carrier that didn’t charge to create them. That change immediately saved $0.50 on every order.

Multi-carrier shipping created new revenue for the brand, too. After adding an economy service through ShipJunction, the brand could deliver to PO Boxes and military addresses, and online sales saw a 4% monthly lift.

In the warehouse, running international orders through the same workflow as domestic orders saves an estimated 5 hours every week.

In Their Own Words

“We really cannot say enough about this software and accompanying service provided by the professionals at ShipJunction. For the past 5 years we have looked at multiple ways to improve our eCommerce shipping operations while also reducing our overall shipping spend; nothing comes close to the ability of ShipJunction to do both simultaneously. And I cannot forget the intangibles here: working with the staff at ShipJunction is an absolute pleasure.” – Director of eCommerce