When sustainable clothing brand Slow Love Knitwear began to scale, they were overwhelmed by the process of copying and pasting addresses into multiple carrier portals. They would have hired extra staff members without Shiptheory's seamless automatic label printing.
See how Shiptheory was set up within minutes to improve Slow Love knitwear's Shipping process, saving them 100% in time.
We chatted to Isobel who stumbled upon Shiptheory when looking for a back office solution to minimise the time she spent creating labels.
Q: Give us some background on the Slow Love Knitwear story
Slow Love Knitwear was launched in June 2022 by the founder, Holly. The first jumper was the “feel-good jumper” which was available in two colours. Each one is individually hand-knitted. Their production has to be quite thought out and well timed because of how long they take to make; not a single part of them is machine knitted. This is a unique selling point as they are made with care and love, making them look and feel different from normal high-street jumpers. We try to reduce waste as much as possible by only commissioning a few jumpers at a time.
All our jumpers are individually hand-knitted in Hong Kong, where we have a great relationship with the people out there, which we are proud of and makes the garments even more special when we receive them.
Q: What did your workflow look like before Shiptheory?
Before we found Shiptheory, we manually processed everything via the Royal Mail website. We could only ever do ten labels at a time, and each ten labels used to take between 30 to 40 minutes. We would have to manually copy and paste all names, order numbers and addresses. We soon learned how challenging managing orders and addresses in a spreadsheet is.
The next step would be the labels, which was a two-man job. One of us would do the labels while the other one packed; the packing would be so slow because they’d be waiting for the labels to generate; it was super inefficient. We would have to set aside time to do labels instead of focusing on the core parts of the business. This was not scaleable, especially if we wanted to bring out different designs and grow our social channels.
It wasn't long before we needed a new solution. Thankfully, that's why now we have Shiptheory; these two-person jobs seem like a distant memory. It's now a quick one-person job without stress; we have saved the need to employ another staff member to do this daily.
Q: How did it all start with Shiptheory?
When the demand and process started getting confusing, I started researching how these integrations work and how we can set them up. I saw that you guys were based In Bristol; I was like, WOW, down the road to me, what a good fit. There were so many Shipping Solutions that didn't have so much as a phone number to call for support.
Finding Shiptheory was smooth and simple; within minutes, I was on the phone with Josh, who explained the situation and how it would work within our workflow. After this, we set up the free trial, and now I couldn't survive without it. We are a completely online business; we don't have any physical shops. We sell all our jumpers through Shopify, which Shiptheory perfectly integrates. Then we ship with Royal Mail and DHL, which again were super simple to set up with our account manager.
Q: HOW DOES SHIPTHEORY FIT INTO YOUR WORKFLOW?
Shiptheory now handles everything from label generation to the booking of shipments. We can sell on Shopify, and it automatically gets booked in with Royal Mail with no human intervention.
Now, label generation and shipment booking used to take us 40 minutes to print 10, and now we can print 100 in less than that time. It's great that even if we are all working remotely, I can still manage and fulfil orders and get them to print in the office for the others to sort; there is never a hold-up. All this has allowed us to expand our social media platforms and release new products. Looking into the future, we can scale with ease, knowing the shipping is all on autopilot, no matter the volume of orders.
Q: What do you like most about working with Shiptheory?
We have had a great experience with the support team. Their response times are great, and they are always friendly if I need help understanding something. I've had multiple chats to sort out simple things I couldn't do myself, which are always resolved within minutes. I can always count on an actual individual to help us troubleshoot and provide guidance.
Not only that, it automates everything. It's easy to understand the interface and dashboard are so user-friendly. You often come across solutions with really confusing interfaces, which are not fun to spend time learning how to use. With Shiptheory, I can see what is going where and who ordered it; it is so transparent.