Toy retailer eChapps saves $15,000 a year with Veeqo
“Immediately when switching to Veeqo we probably saved $15,000 over the year, and that’s just money straight back into our pockets.”
eChapps in numbers
$8.5 million in annual sales
150,000 orders p/m in peak
20,000 sqft warehouse
$8.5 million in annual sales
150,000 orders p/m in peak
20,000 sqft warehouse
Their Goal: Scaling & moving to a larger space
When scaling their family-owned toy business in 2022, eChapps were keen to lower their costs and manage their multichannel inventory more efficiently.
eChapps is an ecommerce retailer selling toys including Gel Blasters, Pusheen plushies, and the World's Smallest The Elf On The Shelf, and had been managing their $8.5 million a year ecommerce business from their family home and 25 storage units.
As part of their business plan, they were looking to lease their very first warehouse at the end of 2023, but eChapps needed to cut costs in their business first and make their order fulfillment process more efficient, before they could make the move.
That’s where Veeqo came in.
Switching software instantly lowered their costs
With Veeqo finding that 60% of sellers* have experienced an increase in costs from their shipping software, eChapps were one of those businesses who knew there must be a better way to manage their growing inventory and shipping needs.
eChapps ship roughly 150,000 orders each month in peak season, with 93% being FBA and 7% being seller-fulfilled, so they were spending between $1500-$2000 per month with their previous software, depending on the month and season.
Switching to Veeqo helped them save $15,000 per year instantly. In addition to the lack of software fees, eChapps say they’re also now getting lower shipping rates, as well as up to 5% back in Veeqo Credits on their eligible shipping labels.
And Veeqo is an Amazon Shipping partner, who eChapps frequently uses for shipping orders.
Table of Contents
• How Veeqo Helped eChapps Move Into Their First Warehouse
• Moving to a Warehouse is Enabling them to Grow Quicker
• Increasing the Speed & Sustainability of their Logistics Process
• Veeqo isn’t the Only Amazon Service Helping eChapps
How Veeqo helped eChapps move into their first warehouse
We visited Ben Chappell, the co-founder of eChapps, and his family at their new, 20,000 sq ft warehouse in February with our product team, to help the family set-up their new warehouse layout in the most efficient way possible for their business.
We were also keen to find out whether Veeqo has helped them during their move to their first warehouse, and how we could improve the product to help them more in the future. What became apparent early on in our visit, was just what this move means for them as a family as well as a business.
Previously operating out of their family home’s basement, 3-car garage, and 25 storage units that were a 10-minute drive away, there was constant chaos and no private space for the family of six (plus three cats!). A rota of fifteen employees worked from the family home seven days a week, and although Ben’s mom says she misses hearing the laughter coming from the basement, she definitely doesn’t miss the box dust all over the house!
Moving into the warehouse not only means no more box dust in the family home, it also means the family finally get their own space back. But, they haven’t JUST moved into a new warehouse...they moved to a completely different state!
They uprooted their business, their home, their family, and even some of their employees, and made the move six hours south of Virginia, to Greenville in South Carolina.
Sounds complicated, huh? Just think of the time and effort of moving over 400 SKUs to a location a six-hour drive away, and keeping the business running with no errors or customer order issues during that time. Thankfully, Veeqo was there to help.
1. eChapps marked some products in-transition, while others stayed active in the old location
The family are hoping to complete the move in April, but the past three months has been spent operating between the two locations while they transition the business down to Greenville. They wanted to keep some SKUs active in the old location in Virginia, and move other SKUs to being paused and in-transit to the new warehouse.
Ben told us, “One way Veeqo has helped us during this move is we're able to keep selling our self-fulfilled items while marking other items in transition to this warehouse. So instead of having to zero out all our inventory and then re-upload it, we just have all our products in transition and the ones that are still in Virginia, we're able to still keep inventory and keep selling through. And then the second we're all set up here, we can go ahead and finish that transition and everything will be live and ready to sell. And so that's just tons of time straight up saved.”
When he visited their old location in Virginia, he asked one of their employees to figure out a way to put them in vacation mode or try and keep certain SKUs live. Their employee took the initiative and ended up messaging our customer service team here at Veeqo instead of trying to figure out a lot on herself.
He continued, “she came back to me, she's like, 'The Veeqo customer support team is so great, they saved me a lot of time!' So she just ended up making a little list, moving everything to in-transit except for the ones that we're keeping there and it was really nice and simple."
2. Veeqo allowed them to manage their multichannel inventory more efficiently
Managing your inventory across multiple channels is one of the toughest learning curves for new sellers, and even experienced sellers still have issues with it, especially when a business is scaling quickly.
It’s especially important when you’re moving to a new location and need to keep a tight track of where all of your inventory is and what sales you’ve had on different channels. Thankfully, Veeqo helped eChapps solve this problem with our free software.
Ben said, “One of the first things that drew us to Veeqo was the multichannel fulfillment inventory options, especially keeping track of inventory levels. Immediately when switching to Veeqo we probably saved $15,000 over the year, and that’s just money straight back into our pockets. Along with that, the shipping credits has been huge, and just the different inventory management tools and reporting have been incredibly useful.”
He continued, “One way Veeqo has been able to save us lots of time with order fulfillment is it combines all the different channels that we sell on into one list with all our orders, and we can then sort by SKU within that. So we can ship out and print out all the orders with the same SKU across all the different channels, from one place. So we’re not having to go from channel, to channel, to channel, printing out orders and shipping out that way."
3. One piece of software, that does it all in one place
One of the most frequent comments we get from customers is that they love how everything is in one place, and eChapps is no different. Ben was excited to tell us, “With Veeqo, having everything all in one page, including buying shipping labels and printing out all the invoices in a way that makes sense to the customers has been incredibly helpful.”
“As everybody knows, software very quickly adds up - the monthly cost, yearly cost - some even take a percentage of your sales nowadays, and that’s just profit gone. That is something nice about Veeqo, is there is no cost, it’s just a better product and it’s free.”
Not only does Veeqo offer free shipping and inventory management software, but you can also use it for its warehouse management features and digital picking - something that eChapps is now planning to use to make their business and warehouse more efficient, once the move is complete in April.
Further reading: Building a Smarter Future with IoT in Warehousing
“It’s just all consolidated in one easy page.Our previous software wasn’t able to do that, so it saves my team many hours.”
Ben Chappell
Co-Founder, eChapps
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Lowest rates with up to 5% back*
* Access the lowest commercially available rates, based on our pre-negotiated pricing from UPS, USPS, FedEx, and DHL and up to 5% back with Veeqo Credits.
Built In Inventory Management
Put inventory levels on auto-pliot across Amazon, eBay, Shopify and Walmart as orders come in. Manage all you inventory with ease, all in one place.
Enterprise Hardware
Pick and pack your orders with the same powerful warehouse scanner used to help fulfill hundreds of millions of orders in Amazon Fulfillment Centers.
Lowest rates with up to 5% back*
* Access the lowest commercially available rates, based on our pre-negotiated pricing from UPS, USPS, FedEx, and DHL and up to 5% back with Veeqo Credits.
Built In Inventory Management
Put inventory levels on auto-pliot across Amazon, eBay, Shopify and Walmart as orders come in. Manage all you inventory with ease, all in one place.
Enterprise Hardware
Pick and pack your orders with the same powerful warehouse scanner used to help fulfill hundreds of millions of orders in Amazon Fulfillment Centers.
Launching a new product line
And they’re already using the warehouse space for an exciting new project - Hatchkinz! eChapps launched their very first custom product-line towards the end of 2022, and are expanding their Hatchkinz reversible plushies even further with the ability to order higher quantities of product.
And you’ve heard it here first - we’ve asked them to create a Veeqo Welsh dragon as part of the product line!!
Further reading: How to Choose the Location of Your Warehouse
While eChapps are starting off all-floor loaded, after two years they’re hoping to have grown enough to bring in racking, and then they’ll invest in a forklift so they can start building higher. After four years, based on their current forecasting for growth, Ben is aiming to have them either find an extra location, or move the entire business to one much larger location.
The eventual dream further down the line is to build their own warehouse. They looked into building before deciding to lease, but hope that one day they’ll be in a position to build a more permanent eChapps home.
But, given their fast growth these past few years (Ben's dad and fellow co-founder John Chappell, told us they went from turning over $6 million in 2022, to $8.5 million in 2023), that may come sooner than planned. When they first started looking at warehouses in 2022 they were searching for just 10,000 sq ft of space, but further into 2023 realized that the space needed to double if it was going to last more than a couple of years. They now have a 20,000 sq ft warehouse space.
Increasing the speed & sustainability of their logistics process
Having the 20,000 sq ft space they have, also now means they can accept container deliveries straight from their overseas manufacturers to the warehouse. Previously the manufacturer’s would deliver to eChapps’ brand partners, who would unload the orders from the container, and then unpack the orders and ship it to eChapps via pallets, which they could receive.
They’re now able to take out that whole step, which not only is going to save them thousands of dollars per year, but also make the logistics of the business faster, more sustainable, and more efficient.
Further changes they’ve made to help the business be more sustainable, is shipping their items in from manufacturers without the marketable blister packaging - a lot of the time they don’t need it, especially if, for example, they’re creating bundles of different colored bouncing balls to then ship out for FBA. They just don’t need cases and cases with all the branding that you may want in a more traditional bricks-and-mortar shop, and having that shipped to them would be a waste of packaging.
Any cardboard that they do have to receive as part of their shipments, is strictly recycled. eChapps also switched out all of their warehouse and office lighting from fluorescent lights to LEDs when they signed the lease - a cost-effective and more environmentally sustainable choice for lighting such a huge space.
Further reading: How Ecommerce Logistics Handle Seasonal Delays & Disasters
Veeqo isn’t the only Amazon service helping eChapps
In addition to Veeqo, eChapps also use Amazon Shipping and Amazon Lending, and as the FBA side of the business has grown they’ve been able to use inventory as collateral. Ben says “Amazon Lending has been hugely beneficial. About once a year, especially for fourth quarter, we’re able to draw on that extra cash flow and stock up on product. Fourth quarter happens then we’re able to pay everything back and we just have a lot more opportunity that we didn’t have before.”
And in terms of what Veeqo features they’re excited to use in the new warehouse? The new bin location system, and digital picking. We’re going to check-in with the eChapps team in the summer to follow-up on how they're getting on with that!
Read more on our blog
5 Tips For Moving To Your First Warehouse
Guide to Multi-Warehouse Management
