Case Studies

The T-Shirt Printer - PINT Services

More time to focus on the work.

Design, communication, printing. It all takes time. The T-shirt printer was barely keeping up with local onsite customers. T-shirts and other promotional items like baseball caps and koozies sat in a pile, waiting to be shipped.

Valuecube Industries swept in to the rescue. We established a regular pattern of pickups. We get order forms and shipping requests from the T-shirt printer on a weekly basis with occasional ad hoc pickups as needed for larger orders or burst demand. Have a shipment of printed Yeti tumblers done at 4:30? We got them out the same day. Days later, happy customers were drinking from those tumblers. Did we charge extra for the sudden shipment? No, because we don’t need to rake a customer over the coals. We know that getting product to the customer is lifeblood for a small and growing business.

The Spice Maker - Big Fatty’s

I hate dealing with that stuff.

Before COVID-19, Big Fatty’s was a hive of activity, a community hub. Gail Patterson worked hard every week to get food ready for catering jobs and to be picked up as part of a grab n go food service out of her office. She sold multiple spice blends that were a hit with her customers - if they could come to her store and get them. Gail couldn’t stand to deal with boxing up shipments and standing in line at the post office.

Valuecube Industries said “no problem!” We took a shipment of spice rub for a food contest off Gail’s hands and had it in transit right away. Before you know it, the spice rub was in the judges’ hot lil hands and Big Fatty’s had won.

After that, it was off to the races - we got Mistress Karlita’s Spanking Rub listed on Amazon and are currently working on setting up ecommerce and fulfillment for direct to customer ordering. Amazon is a great way to get in front of new eyeballs and customers and we free you up to focus on building your brand. In 2021, Big Fatty’s will be re-launching its rubs and spice blends as a response to the pandemic and wowing tastebuds nationwide.

The Canadians

Canada Post sucks!

You can make international shipping cheaper, but it’s never gonna be “cheap.”

The Canadians wanted to sell on Amazon, but 2020 brought big changes to how FBA product arrived at warehouses. Suddenly, there were limits. Even a hot seller couldn’t be allowed as many units as that big order from the manufacturer. Delays for inbound shipments at Amazon fulfillment centers meant product going out of stock - in competitive categories, this can be a death knell for sales volume. If your product isn’t there, they’ll buy something else.

But if most of your customers are in the US and you’re in Canada, how do you ship to customers without the costs eating you alive? Won’t it take too long?

Valuecube Industries worked with the Canadians to set up Merchant Fulfillment through Amazon to keep product in stock during warehouse delays, and stored and shipped more product to Amazon warehouses as needed. The whole time, we were keeping an eye on things, making sure everybody was on the same page and customers were getting the product they needed. We can ship it, Amazon can ship it - what matters is that the customer volume demand is met.

I don’t know, I just go in to the post office and pay them.

The drum guys are actually two separate clients of ours - both with similar problems. Drums aren’t really that heavy, but they take up a lot of space in a box. One of them would just securely pack the drum into a box, walk into the post office, and pay whatever they asked for.

Valuecube Industries said “Uh, you might not want to do that.” We discussed strategies to save on shipping - from optimizing packaging to looking at different carriers. Don’t get us wrong, we love the US Postal Service. But sometimes they charge too much. Bigger and heavier packages? Those can be handled just as well and less expensively by other carriers with whom we have discounts - and we pass the savings on. Saving $10 or $20 per shipment can have a big effect on the bottom line when it happens every time you sell a drum!

Just launched. How do we do this?

The broth maker was finding success through Instagram selling product locally. But people out of town wanted to try his products and he was left in a lurch. Also, his product ships in glass containers. Suddenly, he’s looking at needing to package and ship these glass jars and hope like heck they don’t break.

Valuecube Industries said, “We got this!” A shipment of 6 jars bound for Chicago was overpacked to ensure no breakage and arrived days later to satisfy a customer in want.

We set standard rates for the broth maker taking into account shipping costs and their effect on customer conversion. Sure, you can ship 1 jar of broth, but it costs about as much as shipping 2 or 3 jars, and if you ship a sampler pack to a customer instead of that 1 jar, the value is so much higher to the customer - and it may sell them on a flavor they hadn’t considered initially.