{"id":91605,"date":"2026-06-02T09:00:00","date_gmt":"2026-06-02T14:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.shipstation.com\/?post_type=stories&p=91605"},"modified":"2026-05-26T11:38:29","modified_gmt":"2026-05-26T16:38:29","slug":"the-cheeky-panda","status":"publish","type":"stories","link":"https:\/\/www.shipstation.com\/en-au\/stories\/the-cheeky-panda\/","title":{"rendered":"Why Cheeky Panda Made Delivery Choice the Center of Its Customer Experience"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The sustainable tissue brand using multi-carrier shipping as a retention strategy<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Every roll of Cheeky Panda tissue starts with a simple question: why are we still cutting down trees for something we throw away?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Co-founder Chris Forbes asked that question after learning how many trees are felled every day to produce toilet paper and tissues. The answer was bamboo\u2014a plant that grows up to 30 times faster than trees and can serve as a far more sustainable alternative for everyday paper products. That insight became The Cheeky Panda<\/a>\u2014a B Corp-certified brand on a mission to protect forests without asking customers to compromise.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Today, Cheeky Panda sells five million units a year. It’s one of the fastest-growing consumer goods companies in the UK. Its direct-to-consumer operation alone ships around 500,000 parcels annually\u2014and every one of those shipments extends the brand promise. Getting that right matters.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“You don’t have a business if this delivery part of it isn’t right,” Forbes said at The Delivery Conference<\/a>. “Otherwise, you’ll always just be chasing your tail.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"cheeky<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Bringing fulfillment in-house\u2014without losing control<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

For most of its life, Cheeky Panda’s fulfillment ran through a third-party warehouse with its own software. It was a workable solution for a younger business. But as the brand scaled and decided to move fulfillment into its own central warehouse, the limitations became clear. Managing multiple delivery vendors across a patchwork of UK postcodes was complex, manual, and hard to scale. The business needed a multi-carrier shipping solution. That solution needed to sit cleanly inside its existing technology stack and handle complexity without requiring a purpose-built engineering effort.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“The challenge is bringing in an extra delivery vendor,” Forbes said. “You’ve got lots of different postcodes, and it’s about creating that automation. And that’s where ShipStation really came in.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The brief was clear: a solution that plugs in, plays nicely with existing systems, and scales with a brand that isn’t slowing down.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One platform, two carriers, zero custom builds<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

ShipStation integrated directly with Cheeky Panda’s Shopify<\/a> storefront and NetSuite ERP<\/a>, anchoring a fulfillment stack the company now fully controls. From the moment a customer reaches the basket, ShipStation is at work\u2014surfacing carrier options via Evri<\/a> and DPD<\/a>, routing orders intelligently, and carrying the process through to delivery and fulfillment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“ShipStation comes in at basket level. Then, you get the options, and then it carries all the way through to delivery and fulfillment.”<\/p>Chris Forbes, Co-Founder, The Cheeky Panda<\/cite><\/blockquote><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

What previously required significant technical resources to build and maintain\u2014routing half a million parcels a year across multiple carriers and postcodes\u2014now runs through a single, integrated multi-carrier shipping platform<\/a>. No custom builds. No data scientists splitting out postcode logic manually.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“We do millions of packages a year,” Forbes said. “You wouldn’t want to do that manually. You need something that can plug and play quite easily, and we found that ShipStation was a very good solution\u2014just plug and play without us having to do too much of the legwork.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"cheeky<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The real return: Giving customers the journey they want<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Cost savings weren’t the primary goal. For Cheeky Panda, the deeper value of multi-carrier shipping is what it means for the customer on the other end of the transaction.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Forbes is direct about the business logic: with customer acquisition costs on platforms like Meta and Google continuing to rise, retention isn’t optional\u2014it’s the whole game. And retention, for a brand whose customers need to reorder regularly, lives or dies on the delivery experience.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“When you start to look at the amount of money you can spend on Meta and Google these days and the cost of acquisition, you’ve really got to focus on not having a leaky bucket,” Forbes said at The Delivery Conference<\/a>. “It’s about retention, and retention is about delivery and customer experience.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Delivery performance isn’t uniform. A carrier that excels in one region may underperform in another. A customer who has had a frustrating experience\u2014and has no alternative to choose from\u2014is less likely to reorder. Giving customers the ability to select their own delivery experience removes that friction entirely.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Deliveries in different areas vary by courier,” Forbes said, “so giving the customer the option helps with repeat subscriptions. Anything we can do to reduce friction is a good thing.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For a subscription-friendly product like tissue\u2014bought regularly and often on auto-renewal\u2014that friction has a direct impact on whether customers come back. ShipStation’s multi-carrier capability feeds directly into Cheeky Panda’s retention model.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“ShipStation really gives empowerment to the consumers\u2014it gives them the choice to choose their delivery journey. And that just creates great satisfaction and retention.”<\/p>Chris Forbes, Co-Founder, The Cheeky Panda<\/cite><\/blockquote><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

What changed<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Since integrating ShipStation across its Shopify and NetSuite infrastructure, Cheeky Panda has built a fulfillment operation that reflects the quality and values of the brand behind it:<\/p>\n\n\n\n