CONCRETE COUNTERTOP SOLUTIONS

Overview

Concrete Countertop Solutions (CCS) is a one-stop shop for decorative concrete products. Founded in 2009, CCS offers do-it-yourself (DIY) concrete kits under its Z Counterform line and the Z Poolform System for concrete pool coping. It operates a rapidly growing eCommerce business via Shopify that supports direct-to-consumer sales and wholesale distribution.

Industry

Commercial & Residential Construction

eCommerce Platform

Shopify

Website

concretecountertopsolutions.com

Benefits & Key Outcomes

Improved customer experience during the ordering process

• Faster order processing with automated rate shopping
• Reduced time for customer support to track down orders
• Less warehouse downtime due to a faster, seamless integration

Identified operational improvements with open communication

It’s normal for small businesses’ shipping and eCommerce needs to change as they grow, and the same holds true for CCS. Setting up shipments directly on UPS’ website worked initially, but the process was slow and prompted CCS to move to a parcel shipping solution for small businesses. CCS’ eCommerce business continued to grow at an accelerated rate when the COVID-19 pandemic struck, and many consumers began placing orders for its DIY concrete kits. The company found itself in need of a shipping solution that could accommodate a higher volume of orders and more complex shipping processes.

• Time savings for less than truckload (LTL) and parcel shipping

CCS was utilizing Shopify as its source system and order management system and wanted a compatible shipping solution that could get up and running fast. Order volumes increased during the pandemic, but staffing did not. CCS needed a solution that supported both parcel and LTL carriers and could help its limited number of warehouse employees process and fulfill orders quickly. CCS also wanted to perform rating in its shopping cart rather than charging shipping as a separate line item, which it was previously doing.

“Because of our limited number of warehouses and the size of our products, it's super variable how much it's going to cost someone to buy our products,” said Ryan Neuville, Director of Operations at CCS. “When we were looking for a new platform, there were very few, if any, that were able to both rate in our Shopify cart and fulfill the orders on the back end. ShipHawk was a perfect fit.”

Solution

Concrete Countertop Solutions was one of ShipHawk’s early adopter customers using Shopify as a source system instead of an ERP. There was a lot of partnership involved in setting up the integration to work precisely as CCS needed it to. “We were one of ShipHawk’s early customers to use Shopify as a source system so working in partnership on the integration with ShipHawk was critical - and worked really well,” said Neuville. “The ShipHawk team was great at guiding us through and if something wasn’t working the way we wanted it, there was an open line of communication. It’s gotten better and better with every update and now, it’s honestly working even better than we ever expected.”

Since implementing ShipHawk, CCS has realized a significant improvement in warehouse throughput without the need to hire additional employees, which remains a challenge in the current labor market. “ShipHawk has helped us keep the labor costs down.

ShipHawk’s reporting functionality has been a game-changer for CCS. As a small but fast-growing business, before implementing ShipHawk, CCS' fulfillment operation didn’t track many KPIs. Now it uses the solution’s automated reports to monitor KPIs such as order processing on an hourly basis, the average time in transit, and time from label print to delivery, and carry those actionable insights back to the warehouse where it can make improvements.

It isn’t just the operations team noticing the improvements, the customer service team is also saving a lot of time. “We used to get calls all the time asking where an order was or why one part of an order had been fulfilled while the other hadn’t - all because our tech stack wasn’t up to speed,” said Neuville. “We rarely have issues between Shopify and ShipHawk due to the integration. That means hours and hours of calls we don’t have to deal with anymore and a much smoother customer experience.”