How KOHLE Slashed Fulfilment Time on The Iconic

Besides being one of the world’s, let alone Australia’s largest marketplaces, The Iconic is just about a household name when it comes to online fashion.

Everywhere you go in the online space, you’ll be hard pressed not to see the Iconic pop-up time and again as a top destination for consumers, and one of the most lucrative places to sell for businesses.

If you currently sell on The Iconic or are looking to expand your product offering into new marketplaces, this case study will provide you practical insights on how one of Australia’s upcoming natural skincare brands used Shippit and IDAConnect to make selling on The Iconic seamless.

KOHLE and their journey selling on The Iconic

KOHLE is an Australian made, vegan-friendly healthcare brand that harnesses the power of natural ingredients like charcoal and coconut oil to bring customers beautiful and healthy skin, without the nasty chemicals.

KOHLE launched in August 2017 with a Shopify store and a marketplace on The Iconic. In the beginning phase, this was easy to manage, however, as more and more shoppers discovered their natural solutions online, they needed a solution to help them manage the order fulfilment process.

Fulfilling on The Iconic is a very manual process

Not many budding entrepreneurs realise, but fulfilling orders on The Iconic is quite a cumbersome and finicky task.

Now don’t get us wrong. The Iconic is amazing, and if you’re a growing business looking to expand your reach, this is a perfect opportunity for you to grow. The only downside is that fulfilling orders in the Seller Centre is incredibly cumbersome and a pain point for many retailers. KOHLE’s Founder, Heather Beeken describes the process:

“When someone purchases from you through The Iconic, you’re notified via email that there’s a new order. Because I was using Shippit to fulfil my Shopify orders, I also wanted to be able to use those tracking features for my Iconic orders, but it was a very manual process.”

Heather was spending at least five minutes to fulfil each order by moving in and out of different platforms to make it work:

1. First, she would add the order in Shippit
2. Get a quote, print the label, book and confirm the courier
3. Copy the tracking information from Shippit and paste it in the Seller Centre
4. Close the order in Seller Centre
5. Deduct inventory from her Shopify store

Besides this process being incredibly time-consuming, there were a lot of challenges it created:

Human Error

Manually closing out orders and copy/pasting tracking information leaves a lot of room for error, and in the heat of the moment, it’s easy to forget what’s been done and what hasn’t.

Your Iconic Seller Rating

Although Heather was fulfiling her Iconic orders in Shippit, if she forgot to close the order in the Iconic she would notice her Seller Rating drop. This means when The Iconic has a promotion or features new brands, KOHLE was less likely to show in the results.

Meeting The Iconic’s SLAs

If you receive an order from The Iconic, as a seller you agree to fulfil it that same day. If Heather forgot to fulfil the order in The Iconic she would breach her SLA and would be penalised by The Iconic.

Inventory Management

Due to the many-fold processes, Heather had to take to fulfil her orders, she was constantly losing track of inventory and would continually conduct stock takes to get back on top of things.

For Heather, selling on The Iconic is incredibly important to KOHLE, so she wanted a solution that made life easier. In stepped IDAConnect, an app that turned one-order-at-a-time fulfilment into a lean and speedy multi-order process.

The New, Multi-Channel Fulfilment Process

Heather started to use a market-leading app called IDAConnect, to automate the fulfilment process she was struggling with. She met with Brad Younger, the app’s creator, and she couldn’t believe how much time the solution would save her:

“I was comparing what he was doing and what I was doing and I couldn’t believe how easy his app would make my life. He was shocked at how I was doing it but it’s a common challenge for sellers on The Iconic,” she states.

In simple terms, IDAConnect automates order fulfilment between The Iconic, Shopify and Shippit, totally eliminating all manual copy/pasting tasks.

Heather couldn’t believe that the new process made it 80% more efficient than her previous process:

1. Push notification from Shopify notifies her of a new order from The Iconic
2. Orders are automatically synced to Shippit
3. Heather simply selects and confirms her booking
4. Tracking and fulfilment information is automatically pushed through to The Iconic
5. Inventory is automatically updated in Shopify

Results

Shippit really prides itself on saving retailers time, money, and keeping their customers happy, and we couldn’t be prouder to help KOHLE smash these goals.

Since using Shippit and IDAConnect to start fulfilling her orders, she couldn’t be happier with the results:

Always get the most cost-effective courier

The connection between IDAConnect and Shippit now means that Heather always gets the most cost-effective courier; for every order; automatically.

Stays within The Iconic’s SLAs

Now that she receives push notifications from Shopify instead of an email from the Iconic, it’s much easier to meet her same-day fulfilment requirement. Let’s not forget how much time she’s saved moving from a multi-step fulfilment process to just two-clicks.

Better Inventory Management

Now that IDAConnect loops all inventory information back to KOHLE’s Shopify store automatically, Heather no longer needs to manually keep track of her inventory.

More Time To Focus On Her Business

KOHLE is a very creative brand, and Heather now has more time to focus on her marketing campaigns and website creatives.