Hugh & Crye
It seems there’s a revolution of-sorts when it’s coming to properly fitting dress clothes; how did you become a part of it?
Pranav: Well, it just started with what we wanted for ourselves. We wanted better-fitting dress shirts off the rack, and couldn’t find it, surprisingly. So we dug into the problem a bit and found that the very way dress shirts are sized needed to evolve. Rather than employing the linear method that all brands use, we designed a sizing system from the ground up, based on the body types of lean and athletically built men.
Have there been any particular struggles in building your business to where it is today? Likewise, do you have any advice for other startups?
Pranav: Where do I start? Starting a company, and bootstrapping it more importantly, has it’s share of challenges. We had to be incredibly resourceful in the early days, and still do. We learned that taking good care of your existing customers is more important than an over-focus on new customer acquisition. And it’s a constant challenge to remain focused. We could literally work 24x7x365, and still not complete all that we have to do. So, we have to be smart about working on the things that will lead to clear, measurably positive outcomes.
How has ShipStation helped you with your business?
Andrew: Our fulfillment process was incredibly manual prior to using ShipStation. We had to enter in all information for shipping labels and returns. We didn’t have a dashboard. We actually spent thousands on an integration with FedEx with a third party technology partner that didn’t work. ShipStation ‘out of the box’ just worked, across shipping providers – it’s been a huge help, and we saved a lot of time which is really scarce on a small team.
What’s your favorite ShipStation feature?
Andrew: We ship our customer orders from multiple warehouses, so the ability to export shipment data to send to our 3PL partner has been critical for us. Along with that, the ability to batch add tracking numbers and send confirmation emails to our customers has helped us ensure that every shipment is going out correctly.
ShipStation 'out of the box' just worked, across shipping providers - it's been a huge help, and we saved a lot of time which is really scarce on a small team.