Crowdfunding Logistics, Simplified.
How Floship delivered a crowdfunding fitness project’s backer rewards
When it comes to crowdfunding, one of the key reasons why 85% of campaigns fail is because they don’t have a solid shipping strategy that will deliver their backers’ rewards.
Fitness Device Crowdfunding Campaign Fulfillment Problems
A large-scale, US-based portable fitness device crowdfunding campaign made the decision to choose Floship as their global fulfillment partner during the pandemic due to their existing 3PL’s inability to meet their dynamic fulfillment demands. Having manufactured their product in Asia, there were several pain points that the campaign encountered when it came to logistics and operations including:
- An extremely tight manufacturing-to-fulfillment timeline.
- Numerous pre-kitting and packaging requirements including the need to remove outer-layer packaging, fitting multiple SKUs into a single main SKU, sealing, as well as own-branded packaging.
- Complicated order splitting requirements whilst optimizing shipping costs and satisfying couriers’ restrictions.
- An inability to source and secure shipping containers during the height of a container shortage.
Streamlined Tripartite Solution
Floship’s team took the time to fully understand the campaign owner’s roadblocks and devised a triple-pronged solution that would enable them to fulfill their backers’ orders whilst simultaneously achieving their campaign objectives.
1. Global Operations
As lockdowns fueled a surge in demand for home workout solutions, additional manpower was required to match the exponential increase in the campaign’s order volume. All Floship’s warehouse teams were onboarded and expertly trained on the specific packing instructions for each backer level.
Logistically, Floship implemented a door-to-door ocean freight solution that encompassed first-mile transportation from Floship’s Hong Kong warehouse to expedited last-mile delivery from Floship’s US warehouses. Floship was able to secure shipping containers amidst the shortage to the US by leveraging its extensive global carrier network.
2. Account Management
Floship provided a proactive and responsive end-to-end account management service for the campaign, dedicating a specialized customer service support team that kept the campaign owners informed, agile to their backer’s expectations, and provided logistic advice along every mile of their rewards fulfillment journey.
3. Powerfully Intelligent Technology
Leveraging the order-splitting feature within the Floship portal, the campaigners were able to minimize heavy manual work, including splitting of the campaign’s orders. This feature automated packaging optimizations and enabled items from one order to be split into multiple packages. This feature slashed the volumetric weight of each package thus drastically reducing the sky-high shipping costs backers had to pay as well as reducing the campaign fulfillment’s environmental impact.
Collaborative Results
Through Floship’s tri-pronged fulfillment strategy and the campaign’s collaborative working relationship, together we were able to create an end-to-end global fulfillment solution that accomplished:
8158+
Orders fulfilled
59+ countries
Delivered backer rewards to
13
Shipping containers were secured during a container shortage.