Learn how UK-based sandwich toastie tool, CRIMPiT, partners with ShipBob to save time and money, and scale their global operations.
Customer Profile
Based in Warrington, UK, CRIMPiT originally started as a sandwich bread sealer that allows users to create perfectly secure sandwiches that can be toasted in the toaster or air fryer. Over time, CRIMPiT’s loyal customer base of “CRIMPiTeers” requested additional kitchen tools, which resulted in the brand offering burrito, taco, and small sandwich sealers. CRIMPiTs are sold around the world on their website, as well as TikTok Shop, QVC, and a growing list of retailers.
Key metrics
- 350,000+ CRIMPiT households worldwide
- 6 ShipBob fulfillment centers in 3 countries
- 45% reduction in US domestic shipping cost
- 112 hours saved per week by outsourcing fulfillment to ShipBob
- 20x orders in a 24-hour period and 100x order growth on TikTok Shop in weeks, all handled seamlessly by ShipBob
- 4.5 star rating on TrustPilot with nearly 20k reviews
About CRIMPiT
Ian Critchlow spent countless mornings waking up at 4 AM to make high-carb toasted sandwiches for his son before he went to swim practice. But necessity breeds innovation. And for Ian, that meant creating a toastie maker that would simplify his early morning routine.
Ian created CRIMPiT, a small kitchen appliance that secures the sides of bread that has been stuffed with delicious fillings so the toppings don’t fall out in the toaster. The result is a perfectly crimped toastie.
The brand quickly ramped up in the UK, and thousands of orders flooded in. During the beginning phases of the business, Ian and his co-founder, Michael Harper, fulfilled orders from their homes and took packages to the post office to ship them to customers. Eventually, the team moved fulfillment to their own warehouse.
But after space constraints and peak season order throughput became an obstacle, CRIMPiT decided to outsource fulfillment to ShipBob. Learn how the brand reaches customers around the world and on a variety of channels with ShipBob as their fulfillment partner.
Moving from in-house to outsourced fulfillment and saving up to 112 hours per week
As told to ShipBob by Michael Harper, Co-Founder of CRIMPiT, and Sean Togher, Finance Director at CRIMPiT.
When CRIMPiT launched, we fulfilled orders from our homes for 8 months before moving into a dedicated warehouse. But it wasn’t long after we moved into the warehouse that we ran out of space. We got to Black Friday and our employees were packing orders with piles stacked up 10 boxes high on either side of them. Not only could we hardly move inside the warehouse, we also didn’t have nearly enough parking for the number of people we employed to fulfill orders.
On top of physical constraints, our senior team spent upwards of 16 hours per day, 7 days a week in the warehouse during Q4, moving pallets, managing labor, sorting out label issues, and solving other fulfillment issues.
It was at that point that we realized we needed to find a fulfillment provider that could manage these seasonal peaks and troughs for us.
“Since outsourcing fulfillment to ShipBob, we regained a considerable amount of time that we have been able to allocate to growing the business. As a result of our partnership, we’ve been able to channel the energy previously spent on fulfillment into marketing, which has greatly helped move the needle.”
– Michael Harper, Co-Founder, and Sean Togher, Finance Director at CRIMPiT
While we’ve been able to completely move order fulfillment to ShipBob, we still use our warehouse in the UK for office space, excess inventory storage, and as a studio for content creation. Because we have a global audience, it’s important for us to localize our marketing for each country. An image created for our UK customers will likely need to be tweaked by roughly 20% to appeal to our US customers. Having dedicated studio space allows us to work more efficiently and create more content. Outsourcing fulfillment allowed us to do that.
When you’re in the weeds of order fulfillment, you can lose oversight of the business. Outsourcing fulfillment to ShipBob has allowed us to think more strategically, make plans, and add value to the business.
Partnering with ShipBob for fulfillment and ultimately unlocking a myriad of benefits
We chose ShipBob as our fulfillment partner and it has been a huge advantage for our business. We knew we wanted to work with a partner that had a global fulfillment network and could support our scale.
Another benefit of working with ShipBob is leveraging multiple carriers. We were fulfilling our own orders during the Royal Mail strikes, and it was horrendous. It caused so many issues with customers. Whereas with ShipBob, we would have been able to easily switch carriers, to greatly help us.
Not only does ShipBob have solid technology that they’ve developed, but they also work with carriers and partners for regular updates and improvements. We don’t have to worry about the technology and changes, we can just plug into the dashboard and do what we need to do.
“One of the best parts of working with ShipBob is our account manager. She’s probably the best account manager we’ve ever experienced with a business. She goes to bat for us and is a strong advocate for CRIMPiT.”
– Michael Harper, Co-Founder, and Sean Togher, Finance Director at CRIMPiT
We’ll ask her if she’s available to jump on a call and within 20 minutes we’re talking on the phone to resolve any questions we have. Also, since we’re within the UK and an hour from the fulfillment center, if we ever need to be face-to-face, we can easily do that. There are a lot of benefits to working with ShipBob’s team.
Leveraging ShipBob in 3 countries to save money while standardizing fulfillment processes and improving the customer experience
As a global business, we wanted to find a partner that had fulfillment centers in multiple countries.
“With ShipBob we’ve been able to create a standardized model for the UK, Europe, and North America. With ShipBob’s integrations, we have the same platform for Shopify and Amazon and our payment mechanisms are the same. This has allowed us to have one standard that we operate at across countries.”
– Michael Harper, Co-Founder, and Sean Togher, Finance Director at CRIMPiT
For an ecommerce brand to ship small-value items post-Brexit, there are numerous complexities with taxes and duties. We’ve expanded into ShipBob’s Netherlands fulfillment center, and that has helped resolve our cross-border shipment issues. Having the ability to ship containers or pallets into the Netherlands from the UK has greatly improved the shipping experience for our European customers.
Before we had a fulfillment center in Europe, shipments would get held up at customs while duties were demanded from the end customer. Quite often, the duty was more expensive than the product itself. That is no longer a challenge now that we have inventory within mainland Europe.
Also, it’s very quick for us get inventory from the UK to ShipBob’s Netherlands fulfillment center. It takes about 24-36 hours for inventory to arrive and get replenished in the warehouse, which is incredibly helpful.
“We use ShipBob to fulfill orders for our US customers. We initially used 1 fulfillment center there but have since added 3 more. Using 4 fulfillment centers in the US instead of just 1 took our average postage cost from $12 to $6.57.”
– Michael Harper, Co-Founder, and Sean Togher, Finance Director at CRIMPiT
If we had worked with any other fulfillment provider that has just 1 fulfillment center in the US, we would have been struggling financially to make it work. But using multiple regions of ShipBob’s US fulfillment centers has made a massive impact on costs for in-country fulfillment there.
As we continue to grow our global footprint, we’re able to test new markets relatively easily with ShipBob. Our partnership has opened up a lot of benefits.
Meeting customers’ shipping expectations is challenging because retailers like Amazon are raising people’s standards. So ShipBob’s ability to offer fast fulfillment and shipping has allowed us to meet and exceed expectations, which has been reflected in our TrustPilot reviews. We get loads of reviews around shipping and orders getting delivered on time. Our community of CRIMPiTeers are an important aspect of our business, so we’re happy we can delight them with fast shipping.
Achieving seamless omnichannel fulfillment with ShipBob, even when orders unexpectedly 100x in volume
Order volume spikes and the ability to forecast them are challenging for any business. We’ve had campaigns that have resulted in 20x the order volume in 24 hours. If we were fulfilling our own orders, we would have struggled to find staff at such short notice.
Working with ShipBob has given us more structure around planning and forecasting. ShipBob is consistently reaching out to ask about promotions so they can scale up fulfillment center processes and staff as needed. As a result, we’ve been able to more seamlessly accommodate large order spikes with ShipBob as our fulfillment partner.
Plus, selling on so many different channels can be unpredictable. One day, QVC will take off and the next, TikTok Shop orders are flying. What makes it extra challenging is some retailers like Amazon will punish you if you don’t fulfill orders in time.
When we were doing fulfillment on our own, we prioritized Amazon orders so we wouldn’t be penalized. So while we were making our Amazon customers happy, customers that ordered from our website orders were unsatisfied. With ShipBob, we can ensure all customers, regardless of the channel they ordered from, are getting their orders on time.
“TikTok Shop is a very new channel for us. In the last couple of weeks, it has gone berserk in the UK. We’ve probably 100x’d our orders on TikTok but have been working closely with the ShipBob team on those orders. They’ve been able to rapidly scale up staff to get orders out. We’re hitting the 2-day dispatch target, which is good, because then we get a badge on TikTok Shop which helps us sell even more.”
– Michael Harper, Co-Founder, and Sean Togher, Finance Director at CRIMPiT
We’re making a big push in the US to grow our presence there. We’re looking forward to getting ShipBob’s support as we continue to grow.
CRIMPiT’s team at ShipBob
Sam Ford
Sam is the Account Executive who helped CRIMPiT get started with ShipBob.
Sergio Estevez
Sergio is the Implementation Specialist who onboarded CRIMPiT to ShipBob.
Rachel Parkinson
Rachel is the Merchant Success Manager who supports CRIMPiT.
Get started with ShipBob
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