How Peachymama Increased Processing Speed By 400% With ShipStation

Peachymama is Australia’s first post-pregnancy nursing wear specialist. Founded by Merril Bainbridge, who identified a gap in the market for post-pregnancy clothing following the birth of her second child, Peachymama fuses fashion with functionality for new mums.

“Function is a really important part of our business. After I had my second child, I was really frustrated that I couldn’t find any post-pregnancy clothing. I realised there was a gap in the market and there was a consumer that was not being serviced sufficiently,” said Merril.

Merril’s background in the fashion industry helped her launch Peachymama as a small online business, with the intention to “let it grow organically and respond to the needs of customers”.

The business began with a modest range of postpartum tops and pants. Peachymama has since steadily expanded its clothing range to include activewear, sleepwear, and intimates. 

Following on from its local success, Peachymama launched internationally, into the US market in early 2019 and has been growing rapidly ever since.

A Local Approach

In response to Peachymama’s local growth, the business needed a fulfilment solution that could not only integrate with its existing Shopify-powered webstore, but also support multiple, locally based courier services.

ShipStation checked all of this growing business’ boxes. According to Owen Bolwell, Head of Ecommerce & Digital, Peachymama selected ShipStation in August 2019 following a free one-month trial because it seamlessly connected to Shopify, supported multiple courier services, and was very easy to implement.

“One of the biggest challenges with order fulfilment software is that it is usually made for the US market and as a result generally works with one main courier, such as Australia Post, and doesn’t connect with other local couriers, such as Aramex AU, CouriersPlease, or Sendle.”

“We trialled ShipStation because we were using Sendle, which wasn’t supported by [our previous] fulfilment software but was supported by ShipStation,” said Owen. “For us, it needed to talk to Shopify easily, and be easy to connect.” 

“We decided to test it for a month, with the intention to see how it went. The software was easy to trial and implement, and the support from the local team was great, especially, our Account Manager, Mascha. She was really helpful and knowledgeable, which made the process so much easier.”

“Shopify and ShipStation working together has helped Peachymama reduce order fulfilment complexity and cost, as the integration allows them to continue to use multiple courier services in whatever way best suits their business.” said Jason Cormier, Senior Technology Partnerships Manager at Shopify.

Improved Operations

It would appear that Peachymama’s experiment with ShipStation has paid off. Since implementing ShipStation in 2019, Peachymama has:

• Increased order processing speed by 400% with ShipStation’s Scan to Verify feature.
• Increased dispatch speed by 200%.
• Decreased manual inputs in their warehouse operations, resulting in less picking and packing errors. 

“A few years ago, when Peachymama was a smaller business, it didn’t have a need for everything to be barcoded. However, in the last few years, since we have started using ShipStation, everything is barcoded, which has made the overall fulfilment process so much faster.” 

One of the ShipStation’s most impactful features for the business is the platform’s Scan to Verify feature-set.

Scan to Verify allows retailers to scan a UPC or SKU barcode to confirm the picker has the right items to pack. This minimises packing errors and provides the ability to apply precise package weight for each shipment.

“Scan to Verify has definitely made the overall fulfilment process faster. You are reducing human error by potentially picking the wrong item because [Scan to Verify] flags if there are any issues. 

Owen explains that “in our business, you can have different styles of clothing items but the same colour, which can be mixed up. For example, you could have a green t-shirt in a v-neck, but accidentally select a green t-shirt scoop neck, but when you Scan to Verify it will flag that for us, which is a great feature,” said Owen. 

Scan to Verify has also helped reduce the company’s dependency on manual labour, which in turn reduces labour costs within Peachymama’s warehouse team. 

Tailored Services

The integration of Shopify and ShipStation lead to a more efficient and customised shipping process for Peachymama.

Through customised setup and automation, ShipStation’s order tags help improve the fulfilment experience.

ShipStation’s order tags are colour-coded labels that can be used to mark orders, making it easier to identify some specific information about the order, such as ‘high priority’ or ‘fragile’, which allows for faster and more efficient management of those orders.

Peachymama has implemented colour-coded order tags to identify Express Post and international orders as high priority.

A yellow-coloured tag appears for Express Post orders, while international orders are flagged with a purple-coloured tag, enabling Peachymama to fulfil these items first.

In addition, ShipStation’s tracking notifications enable Peachymama’s customers to stay up to date with their parcel’s whereabouts which helps improve the overall customer experience while saving Peachymama time.

“ShipStation and Shopify work very seamlessly together. ShipStation sends the customer a courier link with the tracking number. We don’t need to notify the customer of its delivery, which is a massive feature for us.”

“Shopify’s integration with ShipStation has enabled Peachymama to provide more accurate shipping updates, giving its customers an improved user experience.” said Jason Cormier, Senior Technology Partnerships Manager at Shopify.

Creating a Fulfilment Strategy

For businesses entering the ecommerce space, Owen advises to place fulfillment front of mind.

“Shipping and fulfilment should be a component of the business that you shouldn’t have to think about once you have it set up. I think a lot of people that start online businesses don’t realise how important the fulfilment aspect of the business is.”

“Ecommerce is a holistic experience. You can’t have one without the other. When Merril first started the business, she was very mindful of the fulfilment component,” Owen said. “My advice for anyone starting out would be to get your fulfilment sorted first. If you can’t send product to customers there’s no point [investing] in other parts of the business, so do it first.”

What’s Next for Peachymama

Developing an efficient shipping process has allowed the business to focus on growth and scalability, with Peachymama eyeing the UK as its next international market following its success in the US. 

“We’ve been in the US since early 2019. However, we were shipping from Australia [to the US] prior to launch as a way to test the market before we set up our 3PL,” said Owen.

Since its entry into the market, the US store has been growing rapidly. Owen credits ShipStation’s function to link multiple stores for helping the team gauge the US market prior to Peachymama’s official launch.   

“A benefit of ShipStation is that you can link multiple stores. We had two when we had the US and Australia. It’s a good feature, not only for multiple stores [in Australia], but for [retailers] that are wanting to start shipping internationally,” said Owen.

“I’m always liaising with our US fulfilment and customer service because we have localised customer service over there, which is really important. I think for any small business looking to expand into different territories, having local customer service is critical for customers.”

Peachymama also continues to broaden its product offering, having recently expanded its online range to include baby accessories such as nappy bags, baby swaddles, and wraps.

For this brand, efficiency and dependability are about more than just profit. “[Post-pregnancy] is such an important time for women. Their bodies are different from any other time in their life, so they need to be able to look and feel like themselves, while also being able to feed their baby easily and discreetly,” said Merril.

“We are one of the very few brands that offer breastfeeding clothing that isn’t maternity wear. There’s a lot of room for growth within our brand because it’s so specialised.”

Discover Peachymama on their Instagram or support them at peachymama.com.au. You can also sign up for a free trial with ShipStation.