Why HighZer0 switched to Cahoot to drive fast order fulfillment across channels

Hi, my name, my name is John. I'm the the president and founder of Hyzeer Electronics. We primarily focus in the on wireless components for retail across various e commerce platforms. Amazon, Newegg, Walmart, our own website we recently launched in Europe which was great. I wouldn't really be able to do that without Kahoot and their ability to fulfill international orders. So that's very helpful. So I started looking for a 3 PL late summer to do a couple different things. Reduce the number of handling days which would ultimately speed up delivery. That's what buyers are looking for. They want their item, they wanted now and then of course distributed fulfillment to reduce transit times as well. So overall looking to cut out a day or two at at least from my total transit times to entice additional buyers. So I landed on shipbob initially, you know, getting on board with them between myself and our coo, it did. It immediately started going downhill when we were onboarding with shipbob. But we went to them for those reasons. We wanted to reduce transit time and handling time. So I did not. The onboarding was not clear for me. We got set up. I had to set most of it up myself. No one was really assisting me, which was very obnoxious. And then of course I rely on Zentel as my inventory management platform, which that integration did not work at all, even though that's what was advertised when I was coming on board. So it was very difficult to get on board. But nonetheless I continued. I wanted to try it out, give them a fair shot. Maybe there was something that I needed to work through before it got up and running. I sent them my initial inventory, maybe a thousand units or so, just to see how it would work out. I was very disappointed off the bat with that as well. I think it's took eight business days just to receive the items, which that's a very long time. When I'm turning. I usually turn over my inventory every six to eight weeks. So that was a whole business cycle, almost a whole cycle that I lost. I also need some prep various prep services. That's a big part of my business as well. Taking things from a master pack or bulk pack and then private labeling it the item or individually packaging it. And when even after the eight business days or so to receive my items, it then took them another 10 business days to perform the prep that I needed for those items. So start to finish where I was looking at almost a month between when I sent off my initial inventory, between and when it was available for consumers to purchase. And Like I said, that's almost a whole cycle a turn for my, for my company. So about three weeks in after I shipped the inventory is when I mentally started looking around for a different 3 PL. I could already tell it wasn't going to work work out for me. So between myself and my coo we sent probably half a dozen requests in. You know, it is fairly easy to submit them through their online portal similar to Kabut and but and they were fairly quick to get back usually within a day. So that, that part was fine. But every time I I asked you or inquired, you know, why is my inventory still waiting to be checked to be checked in or why is this prep service, you know, five days over the SLA you promised me. And I didn't get really much in return, you know, an explanation or even you know, hey we can. Here's a comp that we did for this or anything like that. It just said sorry we were over over on our SLA tough love. So I didn't really care for that there. It didn't seem like there was any attention given to the fact that you know, I sent stuff out a month earlier and it still wasn't available for sale. So I think that that transpired late early or excuse me early fall. And by the time I hadn't even have shipbob hadn't even completed all of their inventory prep services that I required before I had already started working with you at an Kahoot that they were taking that long. So I, I don't have anything negative to say and even technology, even when issues occur I very prompt responses which is all I can really ask for. You know, I, I sell electronics and I, I do customer service with electronics and computers and it so I get it, it is it. But the I'll start with the onboarding process for in particular it went very well. It was much smoother than the shipbob onboarding for sure. You know, we had our first engagement, our first, our first meeting where we discussed what our requirements were. You talked through in upfront said you know, this might not more or less it might not be a good fit. If we're not able to solve your problem, we want a might want to look elsewhere. And that was very helpful to say here's what we can do. Here's how I can tailor our services to meet your individual business need. And that was very important in particular with the prep services that I require right up front. You asked for, you wanted to see that up front to make sure that you could meet the Need. So you asked for what are your step by step instructions? Do you have any videos? Walk me through and show me how you do the work. So Kahoot can be sure to do the work correctly or we can be sure that we do this work. So that was very helpful. So before even signing on with Kahoot, I knew that you were going to be able to meet my individual business needs because you'd already walked through and checked and validated that you would be able to perform all those services. That was very important for me and that just gets us up to when I signed on with Kahoo A pricing SLA were very clear up front. I still have the document so I can always check if I want to or anything like that. So very smooth onboarding. Once I signed, I know you handed me over to the account team. I work a lot with Jeremy. He's very responsive and right off the bat, you know, he's, he's started digging into well how, how should we get our inventory moved here, you know, from my own warehouse and Chip Off's warehouse. How do we want to stagger that to make sure that you don't? You're, you're still able to make sales during this transition period. So that was all very helpful. The online, online web space is very intuitive. I put in all my, my various SKUs updated information in request to have the inbound sent in. So that was all very smooth, very easy to work through. I think it took a little closer to 72 hours to receive the inventory. But even, even so, 72 hours was mentally what I was prepared for. Going over that if needed based off of holiday demand I would expect it to be a little higher. But as soon as I got my first the inbound was received, I received a message that it was available. That in itself was new. So I knew when it was available in the interface with Zentel went through right away without any issues which was amazing. So I just monitor it now. It doesn't really take much input from me. There's a few buy exception orders primarily based off the shipping destination. I just needed verify but I really enjoy like the, the interface, the orders route automatically to Kahoot which is amazing. That's exactly what I needed. Kahoot. I did some price analysis and because I did get around 50 orders or so sent out of Shipbob and I think I, I'm getting kind of close to that on Kahoot in you know, a third of the time. So that's very good. But the fulfillment costs that I'll say the total Cost, which includes the packaging, anticipated shipping or freight and then of course the fulfillment fee that goes into that is still lower on Kahoot than Ship Bob. It's not a half the cost type deal, but it's definitely more reasonable. When I look at the cost or my invoices and whatnot, it's very clear where the money is going, which is a dramatic change from shipbob where you just say well the fulfillment cost for this was 720 and you don't know what was packaging or shipping or other items. So it just makes me feel like I know exactly where the my money is being spent, which is far more preferable. Of course, with respect to shipbob, I didn't even get to that stage. I sent to one of their warehouses more so on the east coast and I never even made it to trying to get distributed inventory on both coasts of the, of the States. I pulled the plug on them before I ever got to that. But Kahoot, you know, right off the bat I was sent to a warehouse centrally located geographically for this in the United States which has been very beneficial. I'm pretty sure I get two day coverage. Even with, you know, the most ground service is still a good chunk of the country is two day service which was reducing my shipping costs. And then for things that I need to do, you know, overnight, that's it's just the geographical location is much better being able to send it to the middle of the states and I the expandability, excuse me, when it comes to scalability that is very important since I'm scaling up relatively quickly, bringing in new product lines and new needs and whatnot. So that's really great. You know, I've being able to send in however much inventory I need so I can get my, my own company out of the business of having my own warehouse, which has been really good, I think. I look, I probably looked for at least four to six weeks before even engaging shipbob, you know, trying to find every three plus that would service the United States and whether or not they can meet the Amazon prep service needs or FBA forwarding since most some firms don't do that. Some of them are just warehousing companies or some of them are just freight forwarders. It was very difficult to try to find somebody who could do all of the services I needed without bringing in another company. So I didn't want 2, 3 pls that's just that defeats the purpose. Right. So I went with shipbob initially because it was a little bit a bigger name on When I did my searching and the sales team, or the pre sales team, whatever you may call it, they did seem to indicate that they would be able to meet all the needs that I had, primarily the order fulfillment piece and then FBA prep and FBA forwarding. So I did, I did initially go with them. The costs were reasonable. They were still a little higher than I wanted or I budgeted. Being a larger company, I'd say the biggest difference and what is the most important when it comes to sellers is the customer service piece because my own customers are expecting immediate service and I can't, I can't meet that demand and that need if my own 3 PL can't provide customer service when I need it. So that is by far a very, very big distinguishing factor. It just, it took, it took too long to work through shipbob and get my issues resolved to get attention that I needed. Whereas at Kahoot, there were some days, especially during the first week or two, I probably had three or four emails going back and forth with just my account rep alone, answering my questions, making sure my integrations were going to work, all that kind of stuff. So that way when inventory was available, I knew it was going to work. And I definitely did not have that with shipbob. So Kahoot definitely was a significant value add for my firm. And I wish I would have been able to. I wish I would have known or been able to start with Kahoot off the bat. I probably would have, wouldn't have lost so many, so much in sales. But here we are now, things are running very smooth. Everything is essentially automated. Orders can come in from any of my platforms and automatically route through to Cahoots, which is, which is just fantastic. And the last note I'll add on this particular thing, the customer service, like I said, was big, but also the delivery SLAs. So Kahoot has actually enabled me to adjust my sales channels to have same day handling versus shipbob. They did not do that. Their cutoff was, I believe, early in the morning. So I couldn't promise same day handling. So that's another day I knocked off my fulfillment time. So from start to finish with Kahoot, I went from an average of two days for handling time. I'm down the same day handling now. And Kahoot needs that consistently with the SLAs that they have, which has been really great, you know, so customer notice too.