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How KOHLE slashed fulfilment time on The Iconic
The Iconic is one of Australia and the world’s largest marketplaces, and is just about a household name when it comes to online fashion retailing. Everywhere you go online, you see the Iconic pop up time and again as a top destination for consumers, and one of the most lucrative places to sell for businesses.
If you currently sell on The Iconic or are looking to expand your product offering into new marketplaces, this case study provides practical insights on how one of Australia’s upcoming natural skincare brands used Shippit and IDAConnect to make selling on The Iconic seamless.
KOHLE is an Australian made, vegan-friendly healthcare brand that harnesses the power of natural ingredients like charcoal and coconut oil to bring customers beautiful and healthy skin, without the nasty chemicals. KOHLE launched in August 2017 with a Shopify store and a marketplace on The Iconic. In the beginning, this was easy to manage, however, as more and more shoppers discovered their natural solutions online, KOHLE needed a solution to help them manage the order fulfilment process.
Fulfilling on The Iconic is a very manual process
Not many budding entrepreneurs realise, but fulfilling orders on The Iconic can be a cumbersome and finicky task.
Now don’t get us wrong: The Iconic is amazing, and if you’re a growing business looking to expand your reach, this is a perfect opportunity for you to grow. But fulfilling orders through the Seller Centre can be cumbersome and a pain point for many retailers. KOHLE's founder, Heather Beeken described the process:
"When someone purchases from you through The Iconic, you’re notified via email that there’s a new order. Because I was using Shippit to fulfil my Shopify orders, I also wanted to be able to use those tracking features for my Iconic orders, but it was a very manual process."
Heather Beeken, Founder
Heather was spending at least five minutes to fulfil each order by moving in and out of different platforms to make it work. Her process looked like this:
- Manually add the order to Shippit
- Get a quote, print the label, book, and confirm the courier in Shippit
- Copy the tracking information from Shippit and paste it in the Seller Centre
- Close the order in Seller Centre
- Deduct inventory from her Shopify store
"There was so much room for human error because if I forgot to do something it had flow-on effects. I thought to myself, ‘I can’t keep doing this’. It’s ridiculous, and on top of packing orders, it was very frustrating fulfilling out of The Iconic."
Heather Beeken, Founder
Besides this process being incredibly time-consuming, there were a lot of challenges it created:
- Human error: Manually closing out orders and copy/pasting tracking information leaves a lot of room for error, and in the heat of the moment, it’s easy to forget what’s been done and what hasn’t.
- The Iconic seller rating: Although Heather was fulfilling her Iconic orders in Shippit, if she forgot to close the order in the Iconic she would notice her seller rating drop. This meant when The Iconic had a promotion or featured new brands, KOHLE was less likely to show in the results.
- Meeting The Iconic’s SLAs: If you receive an order from The Iconic, as a seller you agree to fulfil it that same day. If Heather forgot to close the order in The Iconic she would breach her SLA and be penalised by The Iconic.
- Inventory management: Due to the complicated process that Heather had to take to fulfil her orders, she was constantly losing track of inventory and would need to conduct time-consuming stocktakes to get back on top of things.
The new, multi-channel fulfilment process
For Heather, selling on The Iconic is incredibly important to KOHLE, so she wanted a solution that made life easier. In stepped IDAConnect, an app that turned one-order-at-a-time fulfilment into a lean and speedy multi-order process.
Heather started to use a market-leading app called IDAConnect, to automate the fulfilment process she was struggling with. She met with Brad Younger, the app’s creator, and she couldn’t believe how much time the solution would save her. In simple terms, IDAConnect automates order fulfilment between The Iconic, Shopify and Shippit, totally eliminating all manual copy/pasting tasks.
"I was comparing what he was doing and what I was doing and I couldn’t believe how easy his app would make my life. He was shocked at how I was doing it but it’s a common challenge for sellers on The Iconic"
Heather Beeken, Founder
Heather found that that the new process made it 80% more efficient than her previous process. The new process had a lot more automation, introducing efficiency and time-saving:
- Push notification from Shopify notifies of a new order from The Iconic
- Orders are automatically synced to Shippit
- The booking is confirmed in Shippit
- Tracking and fulfilment information is automatically pushed through to The Iconic
- Inventory is automatically updated in Shopify
Results
Shippit really prides itself on saving retailers time, money, and keeping their customers happy, and we couldn’t be prouder to help KOHLE smash these goals. Since using Shippit and IDAConnect to start fulfilling her orders, Heather couldn’t be happier with the results:
- Always get the most cost-effective carrier: The connection between IDAConnect and Shippit now means that Heather always gets the most cost-effective courier for every order, automatically.
- Stay within The Iconic’s SLAs: Now that she receives push notifications from Shopify instead of an email from the Iconic, it’s much easier to meet her same-day fulfilment requirement.
- Time-saving: Heather now has an efficient fulfilment process, going from a manual mutli-step process, to just two clicks.
- Improved inventory management: Now that IDAConnect loops all inventory information back to KOHLE’s Shopify store automatically, Heather no longer needs to manually keep track of her inventory.
More time to focus on business
KOHLE is a very creative brand, and Heather now has more time to focus on her marketing campaigns and website creatives.
"Now that I have such a comprehensive solution that connects The Iconic with Shippit and Shopify, I don’t have to worry about spending so much time fulfilling orders anymore. It’s given me a lot of peace of mind as a business owner, and I couldn’t be happier with how much time it’s saved me."
Heather Beeken, Founder
