At the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, premiere performance supplement provider, Hammer Nutrition, was challenged with meeting the sudden skyrocketing demand for their products. As a supplier of health supplements and immunity boosters, Hammer Nutrition saw a dramatic increase in sales in a short amount of time.
Unfortunately, Hammer Nutrition's existing shipping software wasn’t the solution they needed to keep up with the dramatic uptick in orders, costing the company tens of thousands of dollars. The team at Hammer Nutrition knew they needed a shipping solution that could help them continue to deliver a great experience to their customers and help the business to grow.
What is Hammer Nutrition?
Hammer Nutrition provides USA-made supplements, protein powders, athletic gear, and other necessities to high-performing athletes at the top of their game. The company's mission is to assist customers in achieving their health and fitness goals by providing expert knowledge and support. Hammer Nutrition is dedicated to maintaining exceptionally high quality, efficacy, and purity standards for all its products.
Hammer Nutrition focuses on athletes and active lifestyle enthusiasts from a holistic approach: helping prepare the body for performance, fuel activity and assist in recovery. All nutritional products are crafted with the highest quality ingredients to help athletes and health-focused customers reach their fitness goals naturally. High-profile athletes trust Hammer Nutrition to help fuel performance in their given sport.
Hammer Nutrition's Shipping Efficiency Bottleneck
Efficiency within the warehouse is vital for eCommerce businesses to deliver an excellent customer experience. Hammer Nutrition experienced a devastating shipping bottleneck due to the sudden increase in demand during the pandemic. Almost overnight, the Hammer Nutrition team found themselves needing to double and triple order throughput. As a health supplement provider during a pandemic, it's no surprise that the business saw a dramatic increase in sales in a short amount of time. People worldwide were suddenly on the hunt for immunity boosters and vitamins to help fight illness and strengthen their immune systems.
As a result of the influx of orders, it became clear the company's existing shipping software was a bottleneck hindering business growth and preventing them from moving inventory out the door. Hammer Nutrition knew it was time for a change; they needed an automated eCommerce fulfillment solution, and they needed it immediately.
Why Hammer Nutrition Chose ShipHawk to Help Increase Throughput
Despite their best efforts, the Hammer Nutrition team just could not keep up with the demand because their existing shipping software only allowed them to ship 300-400 orders per day. While the previous software worked well when order volume was lower, during this rapid increase in sales, it was clear they needed a new solution.
Hammer Nutrition was experiencing several major shipping pain points which ultimately led to making the switch to ShipHawk. Some of these challenges were:
- Slow order processing times due to relying heavily on manual processes and human decision-making.
- An inability to compare shipping rates because of the previous software’s lack of shipping options for both the customer and Hammer Nutrition.
- Onboarding took too long, resulting in a high cost of both time and money when hiring new employees.
- No cartonization or packing optimization capabilities forced warehouse workers to make the decision of which box to use for shipping, resulting in incorrectly packed orders and profit loss.
Fortunately, ShipHawk’s automated eCommerce fulfillment solution was exactly what Hammer Nutrition required to streamline its shipping and fulfillment process and overcome these challenges. What's more, ShipHawk also provided Hammer Nutrition with a solution that is directly integrated with its ERP, NetSuite, allowing for a seamless transfer of order details and data between the two systems.
Increased Shipping Efficiency While Lowering Shipping Costs
ShipHawk's automated eCommerce fulfillment solution provided Hammer Nutrition with an effective software solution that significantly increased warehouse efficiency and productivity. IT Director and Project Manager at Hammer Nutrition, Brandon Harrell, praised the result of working with ShipHawk: “After changing to ShipHawk we did 700-800 orders a day. Same staff, the same number of hours in the workday. It was a night and day difference.”
In addition to increasing throughput by 2x, Hammer Nutrition also saw a reduction in shipping errors. Shipping errors are the Achilles heel of eCommerce businesses, causing large losses annually in most cases. Harrell explains: “Usually a company with our shipping costs would see around $100K-$150K in overages and packages shipped through a wrong service or other shipping anomalies.”
ShipHawk’s Smart Packing and automated rate shopping meant that every order was shipped in the best box, with the right carrier and service level, eliminating the need for manual decision-making. “The combo of automated rate shopping and Smart Packing™ saved us 20% in shipping costs,” said Harrell. The ability to create and manage business rules was another game-changer for the team. “The fluidity of ShipHawk for our IT team has been huge,” said Harrell.
Reduce Shipping Costs to Increase Customer Satisfaction
After overcoming a stressful period following its pandemic shipping bottleneck, Hammer Nutrition has since been able to streamline and automate its fulfillment process with help from ShipHawk. The efficiency and reduced shipping costs ShipHawk has helped Hammer Nutrition achieve now empowers them to provide more affordable shipping rates to their customers. When eCommerce businesses are able to reduce their shipping expenses with automated shipping software, they can often pass those savings down to their customers. Providing cost savings on shipping to customers is often an overlooked opportunity to improve the customer's experience and foster customer loyalty.
Learn More About ShipHawk’s Automated eCommerce Fulfillment Solution
If your eCommerce business is tired of using clunky shipping software hindering your ability to get more orders out the door, contact a member of our team today. ShipHawk is dedicated to providing our customers with automated eCommerce fulfillment solutions that help improve and automate the world behind the buy button™ so you can deliver a world-class experience to your customers.
Don’t waste any more time, money, or customers due to solvable shipping challenges. ShipHawk can help your business scale and grow by reducing shipping costs, and increasing throughput and accuracy in the warehouse.