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Subo Products, an Australian maker of reusable kids feeding bottles, leveraged ShipStation’s automation and multi-carrier integration to increase order processing speed by 81%, reduce errors by 90%, and handle 250% sales growth with a lean fulfillment team.
The idea for the Subo food bottle was born from necessity. Husband and wife team Glen and Julie-Anne Mayer were raising their three young children when they identified a gap in the market. They wanted a kids feeding product that offered the convenience of pouch-style foods without the packaging waste or messy squeezing.
Using pump bottle toothpaste packaging as inspiration, the Mayers created their own reusable prototype and launched Subo Products to the Australian market in 2016. Their Australian-made, non-squeezable feeding bottles use patented technology that can be refilled over and over again. The result? Food ends up in tummies instead of everywhere else, and families avoid single-use packaged foods.
Over the next few years, the business grew steadily, gaining momentum with the unexpected arrival of COVID-19. Selling directly to customers through their Shopify store, fulfillment became critical. Yet it was also their biggest struggle. On busy days, dispatch times lagged.
Subo Products Operations Manager Jen Wales said their manual process was costing the business in multiple ways.
“It wasn’t sustainable. It took so much time. We also couldn’t double check so errors would sneak in, too,” she said.
“There has to be a better way!” It’s a familiar refrain in small business. But when the phrase came up around the Subo packing table one night in August 2020, the team took action.
Within days, co-owner Glen connected with ShipStation. Once they made the decision, the company was up and running in a day. The timing couldn’t have been better. Two days later, Victoria went into stage 4 restrictions and Subo had its busiest year yet—more than 43,000 bottles sold. That’s three times more than the previous three years combined.
Since implementing ShipStation, Subo has seen an 81% increase in average order processing speed and a 90% reduction in errors. The impact on team efficiency has been significant, with multiple benefits improving day-to-day operations.
Customizable automation rules keep order fulfillment flowing smoothly. For example, Sendle is set as the default carrier, but addresses with PO boxes and parcel lockers automatically route to Australia Post. The team no longer needs to manually check for unique delivery addresses or change carrier settings.
“Another really good feature is that we get alerts to combine orders when there are orders to the same address. Customers might place multiple orders if they forget to add something. But the alerts mean we can easily identify and combine the orders, refund the shipping for the customer, and save ourselves time. We also provide the customer with a better experience in the process,” Wales said.
The integration between Subo’s Shopify store, ShipStation, and Sendle automatically validates addresses. Orders are imported and checked for mistakes before items ship out. This simple feature has dramatically reduced delivery errors.
Product tags have been another administrative time saver. The team uses them to track samples sent to influencers and products needing replacement parts. “It sounds small but it’s really useful in terms of keeping track of how many sample bottles we have sent out. There are fewer spreadsheets to maintain and we can easily pull a report for each of the tags at the end of the month and see where things are sitting,” Wales said.
The platform has also improved visibility across the board.
“It’s really easy to look up and track where an order is at so we can respond to customer inquiries more efficiently,” she said.
Subo’s growth over the past year has proven that ShipStation can scale alongside a growing business.
“I remember processing orders late one night and couldn’t print any more labels. I checked and could see we’d used our monthly allocation. With more labels to print, we simply upgraded our subscription to the next plan. We could continue processing the orders that very instant. ShipStation can grow in the moment with you,” Wales said.
“ShipStation can grow in the moment with you.”Jen Wales, Operations Manager, Subo Products
“ShipStation can grow in the moment with you.”
Beyond the platform itself, the support team has given Subo confidence they have a true partner.
“Whenever we are looking for a more efficient way of approaching an aspect of fulfillment I send an email to customer service to see if the platform has a feature that we can utilize. They always have suggestions on ways we can get even more out of ShipStation. They will happily jump on a call to walk us through anything we need support with,” Wales said.
During one Black Friday and Cyber Monday weekend, the team faced an unexpected problem that needed immediate resolution.
“We emailed the customer service team, who immediately jumped in and fixed things. They said not to worry, they knew how busy the weekend would be for their customers so there was a team on call all weekend—if anything happened to contact them. It made me think, wow, that’s really cool they know what’s going on for our business,” Wales said.
Since implementing ShipStation in August 2020, Subo has decreased manual labor needs, reduced costs, and freed up the team to focus on growth.
Today, orders flow seamlessly from Shopify through customized automation rules to the correct carriers. Labels print, products are packed and double-checked, and items ship to customers. The results speak for themselves:
For ecommerce businesses, fulfillment takes up significant time and resources. The ShipStation and Sendle integration has created meaningful efficiencies for Subo Products, giving owners Glen and Julie-Anne the opportunity to work on the business, not just in it.
The time and resources saved on fulfillment are now channeled into growth. In 2021, Subo will launch a new product and brand refresh, focus on marketing, and move into a new factory and office space.
Ready to eliminate manual fulfillment bottlenecks and scale without adding headcount?
Join Jen Wales and the Subo Products team who turned shipping chaos into a competitive advantage with ShipStation. Get the same powerful automation and carrier integrations that helped a small Australian business handle 250% growth while cutting fulfillment time by more than 50%.
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Manual order processing couldn't scale with 250% sales growth, causing dispatch delays, errors, and unsustainable labor costs as orders tripled to 43,000 annually.