Primitive Skateboarding Gained Street Cred with ShipHero’s WMS
Primitive Skate has been changing the apparel and hardgoods game since 2008. Founded by pro skateboarder Paul Rodriguez, he and his partners’ initial concern was outfitting skaters with the hottest skate gear. However, once Primitive began to grow, especially with partnerships like Zumiez and a rising profile in the skate world, their operation needed to move from the ground floor to the penthouse.
Enter ShipHero. ShipHero’s Warehouse Management System helped Primitive revolutionize their warehouse, and moved them from a clunky system with too many steps to one streamlined platform that could handle it all.
“One step in ShipHero is about six or seven steps in the other system,” Ricky Jordan, Senior Technology Manager at Primitive Skate told us. “The old program was taking us back 20 years. ShipHero is what we need it to be.”
Graduating from the Mini Ramp to the Mega Ramp
ShipHero and Primitive Skate began working together in 2018. With in-demand brands like Marvel, Tupac and Dragonball Z wanting to partner with Primitive, they were looking for an upgrade. They had been with Shopify since almost the beginning, and had eventually moved on from a smaller inventory and order management solution to ShipStation – but ShipStation didn’t appear to be the answer either. “We were selling product, but we couldn’t fulfill it fast enough,” Jordan said. Plus the ShipStation solution wasn’t streamlined. “You had to manually print out a ticket, with no image for reference. So, you press print, wait for the printer, go grab it … too many steps.”
One Step vs. Six Steps
With explosive growth in eCommerce revenue in 2018, it became obvious to everyone that a major change was needed. “I came back from my honeymoon and we now had a warehouse just for eCommerce. I took a walk through and I thought ‘How the heck are we going to get everything processed with ShipStation?’ I didn’t like how it was looking,” Jordan confided. “I thought ‘We’re going to get buried and never be able to fulfill these orders.’”
Primitive Skate’s Shopify Plus rep recommended ShipHero, and Ricky was familiar with the name. “I had a colleague who was using it (ShipHero) so I asked him for a rundown. Then my team and I jumped on a demo and once we decided to move forward, we got ourselves set up and shipping within a week.”
Ricky is one of a handful of ShipHero clients that didn’t need to use our professional onboarding and implementation team to get up and running. With a mixture of his own self-taught experience, as well as a solid team at Primitive determined to contribute to the new system, paired with ShipHero’s Knowledge Base, Primitive was able to get their team onboard as quickly as they did.
The results were almost instantaneous. “We had 2 shifts of pickers working in our warehouse before ShipHero. We managed to get down to one shift in the first few weeks of using ShipHero, and that team was able to pick the same number of orders a day as a team twice the size.” Jordan continues, “Once everyone got more comfortable one shift of pickers can now pick at least twice the orders as before.”
In case you missed it, that’s a 200% increase in productivity!
“We had 2 shifts of pickers working in our warehouse before ShipHero. We managed to get down to one shift in the first few weeks of using ShipHero, and that team was able to pick the same number of orders a day as a team twice the size.”
Ricky Jordan
Senior Technology Manager, Primitive Skateboarding
UX Makes a Difference in the World of Software
“I’m a bells and whistles guy,” Jordan said. “But my users don’t need to see all the bells and whistles. I love easy interfaces. Why overcomplicate things? So I really love the ShipHero product for that, and that’s on all sides of it.”
Primitive Skate has credited a few of these “bells and whistles” with making a big difference to their operation. Cycle count is one feature that has made their lives so much easier. “I could get people who never used cycle count before to learn how to use it in five to ten minutes. So, I love that,” Jordan said.
And the warehouse teams love it too. “The hardest part for new employees is learning the warehouse and the locations. It’s not the software,” Jordan said. In fact many new workers comment about how much they love the ease of use inherent with ShipHero. “When we have seasonal team members come in, they see the app and they’re like, ‘This system is really dialed in and easy to use!’”
Jordan also appreciates that the ease of implementation with ShipHero makes the IT team look good. Plus, it’s not complicated. “You don’t need a tech staff, you don’t need an MSP for it.”
With over 5 years of experience with ShipHero’s WMS, it makes sense that Ricky and the Primitive Skate team know the product pretty well. They definitely appreciate what they have achieved.
“With ShipHero, you’ve got the flow of everything from start to finish. But then, you have more warehousing tools: you have cycle count, mobile replenishment, and 3PL additions. You have a lot of extra bells and whistles there, which doesn’t over complicate the product. You’ve got a lot of things going on in ShipHero, but it’s not overly complicated. It’s still simple to set up, simple to use.”
If you’d like to learn more about ShipHero’s Warehouse Management System and how it can help your team to be more productive and cost-effective, contact us for a demo today.
