Like they teach in all MBA programs, sales and marketing is a lot like a beer bong. You need to have a large funnel to catch the liquid wherever it’s poured, you need to have a strong and sturdy pipeline that guides the beer to the final destination, and you need a way to properly and safely consume the beer.
No, this isn’t a frat guy’s dissertation; this is the story of how our customer Kong Beer Bong developed a strong product, sales pipeline and supply chain to grow a successful company using ShipHero WMS.
“We were able to save about $60-70k a year by being able to shop carriers other than USPS.”
— Chase Snowden, Head of Marketing and Sales, Kong Beer Bong.
Kong Beer Bong was invented in 2017 by its two founders, Tristan McIntire and Hunter Souders, two college students at The Ohio State University. The pair spent a year of their collegiate journey developing, designing and testing a prototype for the prodigal beer bong, a device so perfect for drinking beer that Sam Adams himself would blush. Not long after, Chase Snowden joined the team in 2019.
After a successful Kickstarter campaign, the website and first shipment of Kong Beer Bong launched in late 2020, and the incredible team landed $3M in sales in under one year. Like all great businesses, they knew it was time to scale their logistics to keep up with the growing demand, and that’s when they turned to ShipHero.
We sat down with Chase Snowden to hear more about their journey, and learn how they used ShipHero WMS to drastically reduce their shipping costs.
Chase, please provide a brief description of yourself and your business
Chase Snowden: “The Kong was invented back in 2017 by the two founders, Tristan and Hunter, while they were in college. The two of them spent the next year designing and prototyping the idea, and were finally able to bring it to life in 2019.
“I met Tristan in 2019, when we were both discovering the drop shipping business model, figuring out how to sell things online, and building an eCommerce business. We had some luck early on, building a website in the “baby” niche that sold a beanbag chair designed to help babies learn to sit up and gain core strength.
“During this time, Tristan found an investor that wanted to put some money behind Kong, which gave us the foundation to pursue growing that product and brand. We launched a Kickstarter in late 2019 so that we could raise some additional capital for the first production run of 3000 units.
“After this successful KS, the first shipment of Kong Beer Bongs landed in February of 2020, and we subsequently launched kongbeerbong.com. Immediately, the results from our FB ads and Instagram shoutouts were amazing, which all lead to us achieving $3M in sales in the first 12 months.”
Sheeeeeeeeeesh. So, what was your fulfillment model before switching to ShipHero?
“Before switching to ShipHero, we used a website called Pirateship.com to process all of the orders. Being a brand with a core hero product and some accessories allowed us to process orders relatively fast because we could buy labels in Bulk and process thousands of orders at once.”
And what was the moment you knew it was time for a switch?
“We wanted to transition to DHL eCommerce and away from USPS. Pirateship only supports purchasing USPS rates, and it also won’t integrate with Amazon, one of our most recent sales channels.
“We also absolutely needed a bulk processing feature. Almost every platform only allows shippers to process orders First In First Out, and it will only let the user try to group orders together by writing different filters based on SKU and quantity of SKU.
“Grouping orders together was something that Pirateship did automatically, so that was the main feature we were looking for when transitioning.”
Why did you choose ShipHero?
“Bulk Ship – period. Not to mention, integration was super easy and painless. A few calls with Mike and the onboarding team and we were set up to start printing labels.”
What advantages have you seen since switching to ShipHero?
“We were able to save about $60-70k a year by being able to shop carriers other than USPS.”
Follow Chase, Tristan, Hunter, and Kong Beer Bong on social media and check out their websites below.
https://www.facebook.com/KongBeerBong/
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