How ISKN Cut
US Delivery Times and Costs
With Local Fulfillment and Returns
ISKN, the French company behind the Slate and Repaper smart drawing tablets, served its biggest market outside France from a warehouse in France. Moving US fulfillment and returns to a Salesupply warehouse in the US cut delivery times and logistics costs, and gave returned devices a local route through testing and refurbishment.
- Industry
- Creative tech
- Services
- Fulfillment, returns
- Market
- United States
- Platform
- Shopify
- Result
- A “very substantial cost saving” after the first peak season
The Challenge: A US Market Served From France
ISKN built a new product category: a tablet that puts a pencil drawing on paper and on screen at the same time. A Kickstarter campaign proved the demand while the product was still a prototype. The team had to build the company, the operation and the product at once, and packed the first orders for its backers by hand.
A specialized ecommerce warehouse in France solved the volume. It did not solve the geography. Apart from France, the US was ISKN's main market, and every US order travelled from the factory in China to France and then across the Atlantic as a single parcel. Returns took the same long road: US customers received a return label with a French address.
“We moved to a specialised e-commerce warehouse in France but one big issue remained: apart from France the US was our main market. Shipping products from China to France and after that individually to the US was both time consuming and costly. Even without taking reverse logistics into account.”
The Approach: Fulfillment and Returns Inside the US
ISKN was looking for a fix for its returns when one of its logistics partners pointed to Salesupply. What settled it was the network: Salesupply could run ISKN's orders from a fulfillment center in the US.
“Salesupply was recommended by one of our logistic partners while we were trying to tackle the issue of product returns. When we discovered that Salesupply also had warehouses in the US in their global fulfillment network, we started working together.”
Connecting ISKN's Shopify store to Salesupply's systems went fast. US fulfillment and returns went live right at the start of ISKN's peak season, and US orders now ship from inside the US instead of crossing the Atlantic one parcel at a time.
Returns: From Cost to Added Value
ISKN sells valuable electronic devices, so a return is more than a label and a refund. US customers now send their returns to a local US address. Salesupply creates the return labels through the returns app in ISKN's Shopify store, inspects every package, runs ISKN's test software on the device, handles refurbishment and reimburses the customer.
“I can’t stress enough how important the reverse logistics process is for us. We are not selling fashion, our products are valuable electronic devices with a lot of tech involved.”
“The fact that Salesupply was able to take over this entire process of reverse logistics, testing, refurbishing and reimbursements, saves us costs and adds value to the whole process.”
The Result: A Very Substantial Saving
Right after that first peak season, ISKN compared the numbers.
“Right after that peak season we compared the results and the savings in logistics and the savings in reverse logistics were astonishing. I am not talking about €10k or €20k here, it was a very substantial cost saving.”
- Faster deliveryUS orders ship from inside the US, not one by one from France.
- Lower costsSavings in both fulfillment and returns.
- A local return addressUS customers send returns to the US, not to France.
- One partner for the returns flowLabels, inspection, testing, refurbishment and refunds.
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