“When Black Friday hit… We all stood around the label printer and watched 80 orders print and they’re just spilling out all over the floor and it was the first time we’ve ever had that many orders at one time ever.”
Todd Preston, Chattanooga Beard Co.

Matt Patty started Chattanooga Beard Co. in 2017, wanting to offer better-smelling, quality beard products to his clients. He started selling in his own barbershop and at the Chattanooga Market— a local arts and farmers market. The success Chattanooga Beard Co. achieved locally inspired Matt to further grow the business, but there was one challenge standing the way: shipping to Chickamauga, 20 minutes away from Chattanooga, cost them $14. Outrageous shipping prices were keeping Matt from expanding the business to a wider market. About six months ago, he brought on Todd Preston to help.

Todd knew they needed a solution if they were going to create a sustainable ecommerce business. One day when opening a package, Todd saw a packing slip with ShipStation’s name. He looked into ShipStation and found the cause of their high shipping costs: “We were using UPS for items that were under a certain weight… so I realized that USPS was better built for our product line with it being so lightweight”. When Todd decided ShipStation was the solution they needed to make their ecommerce store happen, connecting everything was easy. They were able to connect their existing Squarespace site with ShipStation, as well as create a new Stamps.com account to save close to ten dollars per shipment.

After connecting his accounts with ShipStation, Todd needed help getting started. He was connected with an account manager: “She walked me through the entire setup in four or five minutes maybe, and I was literally like, ‘That’s it?’ She’s like, ‘That’s it’… ‘All I do is push this button and everything just prints out and I put it on a box and sticker it?’”

Implementing a shipping solution allowed Chattanooga Beard Co. to grow their online business and expand their reach. Todd says ShipStation helped them cut on shipping costs that were keeping them from selling and growing online: “We’re able to offer discounts. We’re able to get out products to more people. If you can imagine, shipping something that light 20 minutes down the road cost us 14 bucks, what would an order from California do to us?”

Chattanooga Beard Co. is now receiving orders from all over the United States. Before implementing ShipStation, the team was putting together orders manually. Receiving 50 orders would’ve taken three days for them to send out. Matt said with ShipStation, they could easily process and ship hundreds of orders a day if needed.

Todd credits ShipStation’s automation rules for their improved fulfillment speeds. With automation rules, they no longer have to weigh every order. Each product has a recorded weight in the system that dictates how the order will be sent. When they have an order weighing under one pound, it will automatically be shipped with USPS first class. If it weighs over one pound, it will automatically be shipped with USPS priority mail. Having these rules in place “takes all of the work out of it” and keeps the fulfillment process easy and cost-effective.

“Now we don’t look at shipping the same way. It’s not: ‘Oh my gosh, we have five orders.’ It’s like: ‘Hey, we had five orders this morning and they’re already done.’ So we can go on with the things that we need to focus on: our marketing and all of the rest of the stuff we do developing our product line. It’s allowed us to focus more on growing our company”.
Todd Preston, Chattanooga Beard Co.

Taking your business online can be time-consuming and expensive without the right solutions. High shipping costs and slow manual fulfillment stand in the way of ecommerce growth for a lot of small businesses. ShipStation helped Chattanooga Beard Co. choose the best carrier for their product specifications and get the best rates possible, supporting their expansion into new markets across the country. Saving time on the shipping process allowed their small team to better focus their energy on what matters—their products and customers.