You may have a fully stocked makeup bag with brushes, powders, glues, creams, pencils, primers, and more, but still struggle to get the LATAM look. That’s why ShipHero customer, ILOVEPINCH.com, solves your cosmetic challenges with their 9-step, 10-minute makeup routine for the perfect look, every time.
When their breakthrough cosmetic line and application system first came to market, the ILOVEPINCH.com team struggled to keep up with initial demand. They could only pick, pack and ship 100 orders per day, and the costs from mis-picked products and supply chain errors were adding up. After a trip to a fully functioning fulfillment center, they knew it was time to give their fulfillment operations a complete makeover.
“With ShipHero, we now have a replicable ecommerce fulfillment model that allowed us to grow 3X (300%) during the pandemic, and base our whole business model on an e-commerce distribution channel. Nowadays, it is easy for us to expand our operations, faster and with less investment, to other cities and allow our ecommerce to grow exponentially.” — Alfonso Atencio, CEO and Co-founder of ILOVEPINCH.com
With the pandemic-led boom in e-commerce, especially for beauty and cosmetics brands, we had to sit down with ILOVEPINCH.com CEO and Co-founder, Alfonso Atencio and learn more about his business and supply chain operations. Read more about our journey together in this case study.
Alfonso, please introduce us to yourself and your business.
My name is Alfonso Atencio, and I’m the CEO and cofounder of ILOVEPINCH.com. We are a DTC cosmetics e-commerce business aiming to disrupt the LATAM beauty industry by making affordable yet high-quality beauty products for Millennials.
All of this, while committed to being cruelty-free and having a sustainable supply chain. We currently have operations in Colombia, USA, Canada and Puerto Rico, and this year we are expanding our operations and fulfillment centers to Mexico and Perú.
What was your fulfillment model before switching to ShipHero?
Before ShipHero, logistics was a major pain point for our operations. We handled each order informally, and our logistics department generated a considerable amount of back-office and duplicate activities.
On our best day, we could pick and pack at most 100 orders. We also had more than 5% mistakes on product allocation for orders, and this generated an even more cost due to returns.
What was the moment you knew it was time for a switch?
During the pandemic, online purchase behavior skyrocketed, and we were forced to open a new warehouse and fulfillment center in another city in our country, Bogotá.
Besides the growth, just before COVID started taking over in February 2020, we visited one of Amazon’s FBA centers. Instantly we knew we had to take our logistics to the next level.
It was important for us to control operations, mitigate logistics pain points, and reduce overhead costs for the new warehouse. We wanted to implement technology and achieve efficiency for our inventory management, picking, and packing processes. That was when ShipHero came into the picture, and we were able to take our ecommerce to the next level.
It was easy when you started with such a solid foundation. Why did you choose ShipHero? (besides the sweet puns)
Simply put, easy integration with our e-commerce platform, a user-friendly interface, and a complete order and warehouse management system.
What really set ShipHero apart, was the “coolness” and how seamless the tasks looked on the Endeavour App. We knew we had to pick a platform and WMS that understood and could adapt to the new e-commerce trends, integrations, and mechanics.
Also, another key factor was the ability to create specialized rules and interpretations, so that we could make tailored order fulfillment processes that took into account our own conditions and warehouse setup.
What advantages have you seen since switching to ShipHero?
Since integrating with ShipHero, we have boosted our efficiency. We surpassed our previous maximum of at most 100 orders daily, now being able to pick 250-300 orders a day just with one picker.
hipHero allows us to virtually control a new warehouse with a small team in another location, which generates considerable savings by decentralizing our operations and reducing freight costs per order.
From an operations perspective, we also drastically reduced our product allocation mistakes, returns and logistics overcharges.
The operational advantages have been numerous, namely:
- Reduced freight cost due to efficiencies
- Reduced product selection mistakes (AKA mis-picks), therefore fewer returns
- Complete traceability with more automation, by integrating directly with our ecommerce and updating order status. (Before, we had a dedicated person that updated manually each order status).
With ShipHero, we now have a replicable e-commerce fulfillment model, which allowed us to grow 300% during the pandemic and base our whole business model on an e-commerce distribution channel. Nowadays, it is easy for us to expand our operations to other cities faster and with less investment, allowing our e-commerce to scale exponentially.
Follow Alfonso and ILOVEPINCH.com on social media and check out their websites below.
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