A Brand Doing Good

“Doing well by doing good.” 

The mission statement, splashed across the top of the Upper Echelon Products (UEP) website’s “About Us” page, informs everything the company does – and it’s working for them. Founded in 2015, the company is now among Amazon’s top 100 U.S. sellers with a range of products from memory foam back cushions to their original product: a nearly indestructible umbrella.

But with fast growth came sharp growing pains. The two biggest of these: lack of visibility and soaring shipping rates. UEP struggled to find a partner that could help them avoid stockout, without astronomical overhead and freight costs. 

Shippabo’s platform gave them better transparency and collaboration - onboarding 15 team members and 31 factories onto the platform made communication a breeze. With real-time tracking included in the Shippabo platform, the company could better plan marketing initiatives and improve their inventory planning. Automated tasks and reports also freed up the UEP team’s time for more innovation in their product line. 

In Search of Transparency

One of the biggest challenges UEP faced early on was a lack of visibility throughout their supply chain. Getting products from suppliers in China in time to meet Amazon shoppers’ expectations for speedy product shipping was made tougher by their lack of tracking of products leaving the factory. They also struggled to maximize their marketing spend on Amazon and meet launch and promotion deadlines without enough clarity into their entire supply chain.
 
At the same time, shipping rates kept climbing, leading UEP to hunt for a partner who could help them keep costs down. They tried two different freight forwarders, hoping to improve both visibility and costs. Both failed to deliver on those capabilities. Not only did rates continue going up, but UEP’s team found themselves in a never-ending back-and-forth via email to figure out where their products and shipments were. 

The end result? A frustrating difficulty in giving customers accurate delivery estimates, lost time thanks to email tag and lost profits due to labor and rising costs.

“Shippabo has been a great partner and freight provider for us. I can always find the information I need quickly on the platform or rely on their logistics ops team. Their team is easy to communicate with and are very responsive.”

Kenny Cao, Senior Supply Chain Manager at Upper Echelon

Shippabo’s Centralized Platform Delivers Savings and Peace of Mind

That’s why UEP was eager to partner with Shippabo. With direct integration, Shippabo gave UEP what they’d been desperate for – a centralized platform to book and manage all their shipments.

At first, Kenny Cao, UEP’s Senior Supply Chain Manager, was skeptical about working with a new forwarder. In his experience, onboarding and transition always took time away from other projects. However, the ease of working with Shippabo’s platform and team quickly won him over.  “Shippabo has been a great partner and freight provider for us. I can always find the information I need quickly on the platform or rely on their logistics ops team. Their team is easy to communicate with and are very responsive.”
 
UEP quickly saw great results from their partnership with Shippabo. By streamlining their transportation and optimizing their freight procurement strategy, Shippabo helped UEP enjoy a 50% reduction in costs. They also cut the time spent on factory and logistics coordination by 30% - and with 100% visibility into inventory availability from factories, they didn’t have to worry about stockouts. 
 
Most importantly, Shippabo’s portal was easy to use. Much of the guesswork of figuring out carriers and costs disappeared. With Shippabo, grabbing metrics like container cost per unit was a breeze. They could also generate reports to keep leaders and customers updated. And if new features or capabilities rolled out on the platform, Shippabo proactively reached out to offer additional training so UEP could enjoy the full benefits of the software.

UEP’s Favorite Results: Visibility to Enable Global Expansion

Results are what matter most, of course, and Shippabo delivered for UEP.

First, communication between UEP and their suppliers and carriers is much easier (and far less frustrating) using the Shippabo platform’s built-in messaging. Along with powerful tracking and SKU-level visibility, this has streamlined and organized UEP’s supply chain far easier than if they’d tried it alone. Instead of reacting to shipping delays after the fact, Shippabo allows UEP to see those issues right away and adjust on the fly to handle them.
 
With Shippabo, UEP gained:

• Accurate SKU-level visibility to help with inventory management.
• All of their shipping and carrier information in one easy-to-use platform
• Customizable dashboards and reports so the right people could access the right data, any time.
• Automation of many of the time-consuming tasks involved with supply chain management – no more importing, dragging and hunting through data in an Excel worksheet.