Indie Beauty Fulfillment Services

The global beauty market is expected to reach $805.61 billion by 2023. And a big portion of this revenue is from indie brands.

The rising trend in indie beauty is a global phenomenon. If you’re looking to grow your indie beauty business online, it might be time to partner with ShipBob.

Learn how ShipBob can help you establish a global presence and reach customers faster and more affordably.

Touchland has been working with ShipBob since 2018 and there are several reasons why ShipBob has been the perfect partner. Overall, we have had a great experience having a ShipBob as a partner that can scale fast with us.

Andrea Lisbona,

Founder & CEO of Touchland

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What is indie beauty fulfillment?

Indie beauty fulfillment refers to the picking, packing, and shipping of items, including:

  • Makeup
  • Personal care
  • Hair products
  • Face and body care products
  • And more.

These types of products need extra attention when it comes to inventory storage and shipping safely, such as fragile fulfillment.

And indie beauty brands depend on flexible fulfillment services with value adds, such as subscription, international shipping, and B2B fulfillment services.

Challenges of indie beauty fulfillment

Fulfilling and shipping indie beauty orders come with unique challenges, such as managing shelf life and additional fulfillment and shipping needs, such as shipping globally.

Managing shelf life

If you sell products like shampoo, lipstick, or anything else for body, face, and hair, most likely there is a shelf life.

Although makeup doesn’t always come with a “best by” date, they do expire at some point. From ingredients to environment, there are so many different factors that determine the shelf life of makeup products.

One important factor to keep in mind is if you’re selling organic or natural makeup products, the shelf life is significantly shorter. 

ShipBob offers lot tracking to better track expiration dates in the event of a recall, and our fulfillment software’s logic is designed to always ship items with the closest expiration lot date.

Shipping fragile items

Some indie beauty products might also come in glass or have plastic pieces that make for fragile shipments. For example, some makeup products come with small, delicate pieces like applicators that can easily break.

Before you ship a product, consider ways to provide extra protection. A little bit of tape to keep makeup containers sealed shut or an applicator in place goes a long way. 

Shipping internationally

Many indie beauty brands have found success by going global. If you’re looking to ship products internationally, be aware of any limitations.

For instance, alcohol-based fragrances are considered hazardous materials and cannot be shipped by air without certification.

Certain face and body care ingredients may also be banned in certain locations around the world. ShipBob has fulfillment centers in multiple countries and can help with international fulfillment

How ShipBob works

Partnering with ShipBob as your 3PL is easy. We offer fast onboarding, direct integrations with leading ecommerce platforms, and inventory and order management tools to provide transparency into the entire fulfillment and shipping process.

Sync your store with ShipBob

ShipBob makes syncing your online store simple with direct integrations with leading ecommerce platforms, including Shopify, BigCommerce, Wix, Squarespace, and Square Online.

Visibility into the fulfillment process

Maintain end-to-end control of the fulfillment process from your ShipBob dashboard. Search for orders, monitor order status, and track packages as they ship to customers.

Track inventory in real time

Once your store is connected to ShipBob’s dashboard, you get a number of valuable inventory management tools at your disposal.

View inventory levels in real-time, set reorder points, keep a safety stock, and distribute your inventory strategically so you always have product in the right place at the right time.

“We have a Shopify store but do not use Shopify to track inventory. In terms of tracking inventory, we use ShipBob for everything — to be able to track each bottle of perfume, what we have left, and what we’ve shipped, while getting a lot more information on each order.”

Ines Guien, Vice President of Operations at Dossier
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Distributed inventory

With ShipBob’s network of fulfillment centers, you can strategically split your inventory across our locations to get your products from point A to point B more quickly and affordably. Storing inventory near your customers helps reduce the shipping zones and costs associated with shipping orders to faraway destinations.

Distributed inventory also helps you stay competitive by offering fast shipping to your customers. When an order is placed, ShipBob’s algorithm automatically selects the warehouse and carrier that will give you the quickest turnaround at the best price. This strategy has helped our merchants bring 13% savings to their bottom line.

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100% Coverage Across the Continental US

If you’re looking to expand into the United States, ShipBob has 2-Day Express Shipping that provides 100% coverage in the continental US from even just one fulfillment center.

You can also distribute your inventory across ShipBob’s fulfillment centers across all regions of the United States. We leave it up to you to decide where you want us to store your inventory.

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Order management

At ShipBob, we track your orders from A to Z. Filter orders by status, search for specific orders, see a quick timeline view of where your order is in the fulfillment process (e.g. when an order is picked, packed, or shipped), easily find shipping-related information (e.g., weights, dimensions, or carrier service), and get a quick snapshot of any orders that require action.

With order management software for your direct-to-consumer and wholesale shipments, you can manage subscriptions, make changes to your orders post-purchase, map your store’s shipping options to ShipBob, and automatically share tracking information with your customers.

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Reporting and analytics

To provide you with visibility into our operations and performance, and also hold ourselves accountable, ShipBob’s free analytics tool is packed with charts to help you with everything from year-end reporting, to better supply chain decision-making.

Data can be a competitive advantage, and our reports show an analysis of which fulfillment centers you should stock, days of inventory left before you run out, impact of promotions on stock levels, each shipping method’s average cart value, shipping cost, and days in transit, your fulfillment cost per order, storage cost per unit, and much more.

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End-to-end customer experience

We care about the customer experience as much as you and strive to be an extension of your team. From custom branded boxes to free plain packaging, ShipBob works with you to provide the unboxing experience you want. We also help you offer the fastest, most cost-effective shipping options to meet your customers’ expectations.

As soon as an order ships, tracking is pushed back to your store. We also offer return management services, allowing customers to generate return shipping labels and track returns, while getting your products processed and back into your available inventory as efficiently as possible.

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Save on fulfillment costs

Coffee creamer brand Prymal joined ShipBob in 2019 and was quickly able to save $8,000 per month on fulfillment costs, while at the same time achieving 4x growth.

Learn more about Prymal’s growth

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Improve your conversion rate

With ShipBob, dog accessory brand RIFRUF reduced shipping times and was able to offer free shipping, which helped them boost their conversion rates.

Learn more about RIFRUF’s growth

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Store, ship, and grow internationally

Sunglasses brand Ombraz distributed their inventory across 3 fulfillment centers in two different countries. This has allowed them to ship to 55 countries on seven continents.

Learn more about Ombraz’s growth