ShipHero Fulfillment Helped Turn this Lean Musical Machine into a Symphony
Loog Guitars was a 2-man operation for almost a decade. Starting in 2010, after his partner dreamed up the idea for his Master’s thesis at New York University (NYU), Edgard Barilas joined his friend on the journey to helping kids learn to play the guitar. After two nearly disastrous shipping and fulfillment errors with their prior 3PL, Loog Guitars knew they needed a change to keep their business afloat.
Enter ShipHero. With our full-service fulfillment solution and a direct integration to Shopify, Loog Guitars was able to make the switch with peace of mind. They also knew ShipHero could handle single unit orders which is a large part of their direct-to-consumer (DTC) business. Add in an endorsement from one of their investors, and it made switching to ShipHero Fulfillment the best choice.
Practice Makes Perfect
Edgard Barilas, Founder and COO of Loog Guitars and his partner started with 500 orders on Kickstarter in 2010. Initially just a DTC company, they soon garnered big B2B orders from heavy hitters like Nordstrom and Niemann Marcus. The B2B orders created routing complexity and was too much for their old fulfillment solution to manage properly. After traveling to the US from Uruguay, renting a UHaul and a house and shipping his own orders, Edgard knew it was time to change. “We tried to work with best-in-class partners,” Barilas said. “But we lost so much last holiday season, because of what they (previous 3PL) did. They ended up not shipping a lot of our orders. I didn’t think it was possible for a company to act this way.”
In spite of these many hiccups, an interrupted vacation and a stateside house rental, Edgard and Loog Guitars grew a successful and thriving business. However, they needed a fulfillment partner who could do the following:
- Ship orders on time and accurately to avoid chargebacks
- Accommodate single unit orders
- Provide person-to-person client support
- Easy communication via multiple channels
Hitting a High Note
Onboarding with ShipHero took about a month, and ShipHero has already fulfilled 29,000 orders – in just 3 months! By comparison, the previous 3PL fulfilled 34,000 orders in the whole year. That’s an increase in output of nearly 70%.
ShipHero’s integrations and partnerships have opened up other avenues of growth for Loog Guitars as well. “ShipHero introduced us to FlavorCloud, which has allowed us to lower our shipping rate for our customers in Canada, and it’s a much better service and experience for our international customers. The results have been great!”
Loog is also looking to expand into Europe soon.
Features That Rock
“One thing that has really amazed me is PostHero. We actually asked our previous 3PL to provide us with a report to show us what was shipped and delivered. And that’s basically what PostHero is doing. It’s one of the key things for supply chains, to have visibility,” Barilas commented. With ShipHero as their fulfillment solution, Loog Guitars has been able to grow and is looking to expand even further. “The suggestions and recommendations that ShipHero oers and the connections with other partners, basically allow us to be more successful. It makes ShipHero even better and greater,” Barilas said.
