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Learn how 3PL Eco Fulfillment implemented ShipBob WMS in their warehouse and used ShipBob’s logistics infrastructure and expertise to scale.

“We’ve more than doubled our business year-over-year and ShipBob has played a huge role in unlocking that growth for us! That, combined with a 30% improvement in our pick and pack times and achieving truly world-class accuracy rates, positions us extremely well as a company.

As more of our warehouse space is utilized since we are able to take on more customers from having a better offering, we’ll be looking to expand across the US and plan on opening a facility on the East Coast next year. We’re excited to see where we go next and happy to have ShipBob’s partnership in getting there.”

Chris Viltz, Co-Founder and Managing Partner of Eco Fulfillment

About Eco Fulfillment

Based in Canoga Park, California, Eco Fulfillment was founded by ecommerce-store-owners-turned-3PL duo, Chris and Sam. After their firsthand experience with the stress that comes with fulfilling from one’s home or a warehouse, as well as working with inefficient 3PLs, they set out to build a fulfillment service from the ground up centered around transparency and world-class customer service.

Key metrics

• 2X revenue growth YoY
• 30% time savings on receiving, picking, and packing
• 99.99996% accuracy rate (up from 99.2%)
• Over 100,000 orders fulfilled per month (up to 500,000 during peak)
• 35K square foot warehouse

About Eco Fulfillment

Eco Fulfillment was started by ecommerce brand owners and friends of 15 years, Chris and Sam. After playing college baseball together and nearing graduation, they contemplated what was next. After exploring several avenues, they ultimately decided to start a dietary supplement company for athletes like themselves. Once they had a good formula, they dove headfirst into figuring out the early days of Instagram marketing and influencers, which helped their company take off.

To keep up with demand, the duo looked for help with fulfillment, knowing they couldn’t fulfill out of Sam’s garage any longer. However, they ended up switching 3PLs three times in two years due to poor customer support and issues with orders not going out on time. After these experiences, they decided to open up a 5K square foot warehouse themselves, and taking operations in-house alleviated their issues overnight.

As they approached the 20 million follower mark across their various Instagram accounts, they decided to use that success to build a digital marketing business. It turned out that the brands to whom they provided marketing services also wanted to offload fulfillment to them — and as word got out, other brands started reaching out.

Chris and Sam soon sold their ecommerce brand in 2018 and expanded into a 35K square foot warehouse to become a full-service 3PL. Today, they fulfill up to 100K orders per month, with plans to ship nearly half a million monthly orders this coming peak season. Yet with their continued growth, they started looking into better ways to manage their warehouse and fulfillment operations.

We sat down with Chris Viltz, Co-Founder and Managing Partner of Eco Fulfillment, to hear why they implemented ShipBob’s WMS in their warehouse and how tapping into ShipBob’s logistics infrastructure and expertise helped them scale to the next level.

Adopting a sophisticated but uncomplicated WMS

As told to Ship Bob by Chris Viltz, Co-Founder and Managing Partner of Eco Fulfillment.

Before ShipBob, we used an OMS and shipping label software that worked fine for us at the time, but we needed more because it couldn’t easily manage a single brand’s expansion from 20 SKUs to 400 SKUs, let alone a scaling 3PL.  

As we continued using this software, we had to build our own automations for carrier selection and dimensions, but it was very manual. To ship 5,000 (or as many as 20,000) orders per day, we had to pre-print labels and hand them off to the packing team. We also had a WMS that was very limited and acted more like an IMS.  

Our technology stack was limiting our revenue growth. 

When I began my search, the number one thing I was looking for in a WMS was ease of use for my team and ability to scale our business quickly. 

We evaluated several warehouse management systems, and I remember there was another known WMS used by 3PLs and ecommerce brands that we considered, but in demoing their software, even I was having a hard time understanding. It was very unintuitive. The platform was confusing, which was a deal stopper for me. We wanted something where you could log in and intuitively know what to do.  

Luckily, that’s exactly what ShipBob WMS does for us. 

Especially with functionality like batching, which ShipBob utilizes heavily across their global network of fulfillment centers, we were able to massively improve our throughput and labor efficiencies. This drove an increase in revenue for our business while simultaneously improving our margin profile and bottom line, which also helped with customer satisfaction. 

In my early correspondence with ShipBob, we had their CEO and Co-Founder, Dhruv Saxena, on a call, and it was very beneficial to talk to him about limitations we’ve seen in other solutions. We eventually went to ShipBob’s West Hub to see their WMS in action, both in a demo and live environment, and it was exactly what we were looking for.  

“I had seen a lot of WMS demos, many of which were too complicated or lacking key requirements we needed. With ShipBob WMS, you could tell it was built by 3PLs for 3PLs. If it allowed them to ship hundreds of millions of orders, it could definitely help us scale!” 

Chris Viltz, Co-Founder and Managing Partner of Eco Fulfillment

Getting a partner who mirrored our level of comprehensive customer service  

We spoke to a lot of WMS companies, but what made ShipBob really stand out was the personal touch they provided with constant communication. The service they provided to us is what we provide to our clients and that was huge. 

“The onboarding process involved ShipBob sending out multiple members of their WMS Implementation and Success teams to our warehouse, who were dedicated to us for a two-week period to ensure our success in launching with them. The implementation period was awesome. Their team set up everything and held our hands throughout their time here, making it a very easy process.”  

Chris Viltz, Co-Founder and Managing Partner of Eco Fulfillment

During that time, I was on the floor way more than I usually am, learning about how ShipBob grew. It inspired me a lot and gave me a great deal of confidence in our future operations.

By the time the ShipBob team left, everything was ready to go, yet we still got ongoing support from them, and always within minutes of reaching out.  

The communication, resources, and support we have at our fingertips has been amazing. It’s really been 24/7.  

Plus, by using ShipBob’s WMS, we also get access to a white-labeled version of their merchant dashboard.

Compared to the limited portal we previously provided our customers, they can now view real-time status updates, from pick to delivery – essentially, visibility into the entire order journey.  

“Our customers love the improved visibility and transparency. It’s very concise and easy to digest, and it’s made everybody’s lives easier. As new brands are coming to us from other 3PLs, they view the white-labeled merchant dashboard we get from ShipBob as a real differentiator and love being able to log in and see the status of their orders. It’s a huge selling point for us.” 

Chris Viltz, Co-Founder and Managing Partner of Eco Fulfillment

Overhauling operations while empowering our employees 

ShipBob WMS was the turnkey solution that eliminated all of our previous issues immediately. There is so much I can do with ShipBob that I couldn’t before.  

“ShipBob WMS lets us empower each picker and packer to work independently, as well as cohesively with the rest of the team. Before ShipBob, there was a lot of heavy lifting on the management side, so it really empowered our whole team to do more and even leverage performance metrics.” 

Chris Viltz, Co-Founder and Managing Partner of Eco Fulfillment

Prior to onboarding with ShipBob, receiving was very manual. Once we implemented ShipBob WMS, receiving and stowing really took a huge load off of our warehouse team. Previously, our warehouse manager had to manually verify everything. Now, everything is scannable, automated, and overall enhanced to save us time.

We can report this information downstream to our clients and get their inventory levels updated instantaneously, which is huge since they value that level of transparency too. 

Historically, it was also a very time-intensive process to print and process orders, but now our teams can work independently.

Setting up barcodes on each bin location to scan each product at every stage (at pick, pack, when loaded on a gaylord, and all the way until delivery) has drastically minimized our customer support inquiries as we know what’s going on with packages and don’t have to wait days for a response from carriers since it’s handled by ShipBob.  

Even when we train new employees, they are off to the races right away — ShipBob WMS is that easy to use. 

Reducing errors, costs, and labor hours, all powered by ShipBob 

The backend metrics we get through ShipBob WMS let us see real-time performance. It’s even led us to creating a bonus program to help motivate people based on performance. 

“In terms of labor hours, we were able to improve our pick and pack time by 30% while driving the same output. Similarly, what used to take 4-6 hours to receive and stow containers now only takes 3 hours total, since ShipBob WMS uses dedicated bin locations and tells us exactly where to go.” 

Chris Viltz, Co-Founder and Managing Partner of Eco Fulfillment

In addition to labor improvements, our accuracy rates increased from 99.2% to 99.99996% — that’s only a handful of errors ever occurring. 

ShipBob WMS has streamlined our processes. For example, one of our big brands has 15 of their best-selling SKUs on pallets that we deplete within hours each day. With ShipBob WMS, we get proactively notified that the pallet location needs replenishment, so we can alert our team to pull more inventory within minutes before we run out.  

For other 3PLs considering ShipBob, it’s honestly been a very pleasant experience overall. I have nothing negative to say. Their solutions have empowered our management team to focus on more important things, like bringing in more business and working more cohesively as a team. It’s been an awesome experience. 

What’s next for Eco Fulfillment? 

My biggest job is overseeing our broad strategy and working on business development. I’m very happy and confident that we can scale our company to where I wanted it to go, largely due to the tools ShipBob has provided.  

“ShipBob’s made our offering and service significantly better. As a result, it’s made my pitch a lot better, reiterating our value especially on the customer service side, accessing better rates, and providing a real-time portal for all of our customers.” 

Chris Viltz, Co-Founder and Managing Partner of Eco Fulfillment

We didn’t have ShipBob during Q4 last year and it was a challenge for us, but I’m actually very excited for peak this year. ShipBob’s solutions help us maintain our flexibility, as we’re not too small that we can’t handle large volumes but we’re not too big to not offer a strong attention to detail. 

We’ve more than doubled our business year-over-year and ShipBob has played a huge role in unlocking that growth for us! That, combined with a 30% improvement in our pick and pack times and achieving truly world-class accuracy rates, positions us extremely well as a company. 

As more of our warehouse space is utilized since we are able to take on more customers from having a better offering, we’ll be looking to expand across the US and plan on opening a facility on the East Coast next year. We’re excited to see where we go next and happy to have ShipBob’s partnership in getting there.  

Eco Fulfillment’s team at ShipBob

Learn more about ShipBob’s WMS and logistics solutions for 3PLs

If you’re a 3PL in the US looking to scale faster, ShipBob’s proprietary warehouse management system (WMS) can be implemented in your warehouse(s) to fulfill your customers’ orders more efficiently using the same platform ShipBob built to scale its own network.

Through this streamlined technology, you get improved picking, packing, inventory accuracy, and throughput. Built from the ground up by operators, ShipBob WMS gives your team advanced control over warehouse operations, including powerful shipping logic, real-time syncing, inventory management, fulfillment metrics, custom reporting, and much more.

You also get a white-labeled portal that your customers can use to access real-time updates, branded with your logo, not ours.

3PLs can also unlock the full value of ShipBob’s proprietary logistics infrastructure to reduce outbound and on-the-floor labor costs, simplify operations through ShipBob’s sortation and last-mile logistics network, and offer your merchants a premium, more cost-effective shipping experience. Learn more at the button below.