Learn how SMLXL leverages ShipBob’s Powered By solution to optimize fulfillment for 200+ clients, improve inventory management, and scale with a scrappy team.
Customer Profile
SMLXL is a Nashville‑based company that helps artists and brands build, sell, and ship physical products. Since starting out as a small vinyl collaboration with Relient K in 2014, the business has grown into an online record store, merch design, and ecommerce fulfillment company on a mission to help creators reach fans directly. SMLXL has worked with artists like Switchfoot, Louis Armstrong, Wiz Khalifa, Megan Thee Stallion, and TobyMac, expanded into a 13,500 sq ft warehouse, and fulfilled over 1 million orders.
Key metrics
- 200+ brands’ inventory managed
- 10-person fulfillment team
- 1 fulfillment center
- 1M+ orders fulfilled
About SMLXL
SMLXL may have scaled, but they haven’t forgotten their roots.
Having started SMLXL as a vinyl record distribution project run from his basement, Mike Condo always had a heart for growing artists. As the company expanded to merchandise fulfillment and warehousing, he knew he wanted to preserve flexibility for the creators they worked with. SMLXL wouldn’t trap artists or lock them into lengthy contracts (like most merchandise fulfillment companies did); instead, they’d give them freedom to grow how they wished.
That approach was a smashing success. Today, SMLXL has fulfilled over a million orders, is beloved by musicians, and brings the personal touch of a family-run business to each and every client it serves in its 13,500 sq. ft. Nashville warehouse.
We sat down with Brian Spencer, General Manager of SMLXL, to discuss how SMLXL adopted ShipBob’s Powered By solution to revolutionize their inventory management, optimize fulfillment operations, and achieve attentive support.
Dropping a patchwork warehousing solution that hampered scale
As told to ShipBob by Brian Spencer, General Manager at SMLXL.
Prior to ShipBob, we were using a couple of different tools to power warehouse operations, including a popular order management and shipping software. It was okay, but their inventory management tools weren’t comprehensive enough – we didn’t have the necessary visibility into inventory or detailed inventory tracking with checks and balances.
To help boost confidence, we put one person in charge of fulfilling each account. But that was neither efficient nor scalable – if a person couldn’t come in, we had no one who could fulfill those orders. It hampered us from scaling.
Plus, if there were issues, we didn’t have anyone to talk to. The support was pretty non-existent.
Eventually, we decided we needed a different solution, so we switched to ShipBob. As we continue to offboard clients from our old solution and onto Powered By, we’ve gotten to see both systems in action side-by-side, and it’s shown us just how much ShipBob outshines the competition.
Streamlining inventory management for 200+ customers using Powered By
We chose ShipBob’s Powered By solution because we needed a more streamlined inventory management system to manage hundreds of brands and our own warehouse facilities.
As our business has scaled, it’s gotten more challenging to maintain scrupulous organization within our warehouse structure and communicate inventory data across our teams and to our customers, but ShipBob’s robust suite of tools has made inventory tracking and reporting seamless.
Our inventory management has been super-served with ShipBob in comparison to our previous solution. Our warehouse team is more confident in their actions on a daily basis, because the software supports them so much better – they now have checks and balances built into the process so that they know they’re picking the right products, and inventory levels are automatically updated in real-time.
“Before ShipBob, we relied on a patchwork of scrappy tech solutions to manage our inventory, warehouse operations, and shipping strategy.
Powered By has helped consolidate those systems and brought a lot of clarity, cohesion, and operational prowess to our operations.
ShipBob has not only simplified everything, from inventory management to financial reporting, but is unlocking our ability to scale our revenue growth.”
Brian Spencer, General Manager of SMLXL
Offering clients visibility and data through ShipBob’s white-labeled merchant dashboard
With Powered By, we can offer our customers their own individualized dashboard. It’s ShipBob’s dashboard white labeled for our brand, and it provides them with visibility into SLAs and what’s going on under the hood, plus greater flexibility at the merchant level to manage product flow.
The feedback on the dashboard from our merchants has been positive. The customers’ operations stakeholders are particularly excited about it, since it delivers even more granular metrics and insights that they’re interested in, like fulfillment cost and performance breakdowns, inventory velocity reporting, and more.
“We’re a small-but-mighty business, which means that up until now, our software and tech stack has been smaller scale. Powered By has pulled us into a new echelon of efficiency, and their white labeled Merchant Dashboard enables us to offer our merchants a sharper landscape and view into our warehouse systems. It’s a technological leap forward for us, and only builds trust and confidence between us and our clients.”
Brian Spencer, General Manager of SMLXL
Powering scalable fulfillment with an intuitive WMS that anyone can use
Our team is extremely lean, as we only have 10 people managing fulfillment and 22 employees in the company total, even with hundreds of customers.
Using ShipBob’s WMS to power our warehousing operations has been especially great for us because it makes it incredibly easy for anyone in the warehouse to jump in, pick, pack, and ship without needing hours of training or tons of background. With the ShipBob WMS, no institutional knowledge is needed, as we have a repeatable, scalable process driven by world-class technology.
“Prior to partnering with ShipBob, certain team members were assigned to specific brands, and whenever someone was out sick or unavailable, we were scrambling to figure out who had the knowledge to cover for them and how to get them up to speed.
Now, with ShipBob WMS, everything is scrupulously mapped, tracked, and monitored in the system. We can have people leave the warehouse and still have peace of mind knowing that, when an order comes through, whoever’s on the floor can step in and fulfill it with little-to-no hand-holding.”
Brian Spencer, General Manager of SMLXL
That sort of efficiency is huge for a team of 22; it’s allowed us to stay flexible and get more of our staff involved across our entire roster, which will only help us as we grow. It was especially helpful during peak season, too – it was a peak that didn’t feel as much like peak, and ShipBob’s WMS definitely helped get us there.
ShipBob WMS also helped us look at our warehouse and reevaluate how it’s organized and how efficient the actual flow of our layout of the warehouse is. It’s given us a lot of insight as to what new materials we should be investing in, so that fulfillment operations will only get easier for our warehouse manager and team as we scale.
Improving visibility, efficiency, and decision-making with ShipBob Logistics
We’ve already seen a lot of operational improvements by leveraging ShipBob Logistics, their sortation and carrier pickup solution, and once we’ve fully onboarded the rest of our roster, we know those efficiencies to really take off.
What’s really stood out is the visibility we now have into our logistics strategy, especially as we think about scaling. ShipBob’s centralized dashboard makes it easy to compare performance across all our carriers, which has given us a clearer understanding of how to structure deals and optimize costs going forward.
It’s already helped us make smarter decisions and operate more efficiently and we’re just getting started.
Leveraging ShipBob’s global fulfillment network to deliver international orders faster and cheaper
One of our marquee clients wanted to open up faster, cheaper local fulfillment for their fans in the UK and in Europe, which would have been incredibly expensive and time-consuming to set up on our own.
Luckily for us, ShipBob already has fulfillment centers in both those locations, and those facilities run on the exact same WMS (ShipBob’s) that powers our own warehouse! We ended up outsourcing our international fulfillment operations to those ShipBob facilities, and it’s been an amazing arrangement. It’s been really insightful to see how a traditional ShipBob fulfillment center works, and how we could potentially change what we’re doing in our US warehouse to further optimize things.
“Leveraging a hybrid solution using ShipBob’s international fulfillment network means we can have our cake and eat it, too – we can serve our client and deliver just as stellar of an experience as domestic customers get, and do it without having to invest in global infrastructure ourselves.
Using ShipBob’s UK and European fulfillment centers means that orders are getting delivered to end customers both faster and at a cheaper rate, because it’s not shipping internationally. That makes our customers happier.”
Brian Spencer, General Manager of SMLXL
The whole setup’s been so effective, our client wants to start using an Australian ShipBob fulfillment center this year 2026!
Achieving attentive, expert support for a scrappy team
The biggest reason we chose ShipBob’s Powered By solution is the support. From day one, people like our Merchant Success Manager Martin and our Implementation Manager Lacey – everyone involved with the day-to-day details of SMLXL – have been great to work with.
The problems we face as a 3PL can get extremely nuanced, so it gives us much more confidence knowing that we are partnered with true supply chain experts on the other end of the line that are both ready to work through whatever we throw at them and proactive in supporting our unique fulfillment needs.
“We really appreciate that we’re not just submitting tickets into some black hole or giant queue and hoping someone sees it. Instead, we can reach out to our ShipBob support team directly.
It’s just great to know that there are people on the other side to monitor our success and pain points, and help provide solutions. That personal touch immediately separates ShipBob from the 3PL software herd in and of itself.
For a lean and scrappy team, more people and more support is everything – especially during this very important time period in the business’s lifespan – so the support we’ve received with Powered By has been phenomenal.”
Brian Spencer, General Manager of SMLXL
What’s next for SMLXL
There are many initiatives and growth opportunities on the table for us. We’re super excited about expanding international fulfillment using ShipBob’s network. We’ve already seen a lot of success with our marquee client, and it would be awesome to have a global footprint for SMLXL.
We’re also looking to expand the touring branch of our business. We’ve been investing in and perfecting it for the last two years, and it’s been thrilling to see our touring roster grow.
Traditionally, we’ve really focused our efforts on music, entertainment, and celebrity brands, as well as developing musicians and artists – but in addition to that, we might explore the corporate world and try our hand at fulfilling for more standard ecommerce business.
No matter where or how we grow, we’re always going to stay true to our roots: to make merch for all sizes, and to bring autonomy to the clients we work with. We’re always looking for clients to bring under the SMLXL umbrella (whether it’s a developing act or more well-established, in entertainment or in corporate entity) and strive to be an extension of team – the way ShipBob is for us!
SMLXL’s team at ShipBob
Martin Niemczewski
Martin is the Merchant Success Manager at ShipBob who supports SMLXL.
Get started with ShipBob Powered By
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