4 Examples Of How Online Merchants Successfully Handle Shopify Shipping

With 1.75 million merchants using the platform worldwide, Shopify is often seen as the preeminent place to house an e-commerce business. But, while getting set up on Shopify may be easy, figuring out how to get the best results from your Shopify shipping output may be a challenge.

Trying to work with national and international carriers directly is often the first course of action that many online sellers take. However, those starting out often don’t have the shipping volume to negotiate for discounts. The online interfaces for the carriers are also often time-consuming to use.

Shopify comes with a shipping functionality but as your business grows, you’ll often find that there are additional features you may need. The cure for this problem can be as simple as integrating the right multi-carrier shipping software into your Shopify store.

With Shippo, you can use our Web App, API, or find us in the Shopify app store to connect to your e-commerce site. From there you’ll be able to compare shipping rates, print labels, and get access to discounted shipping labels from the nation’s top carriers, with no volume requirement.

To see how connecting Shippo to your Shopify store can save you time and money, we’ve chosen some of our favorite merchants to highlight their shipping journey.

Cao Chocolates: Delicious Chocolate Treats Made From Globally Sourced Cacao

Ricardo Trillos and Anelith Ortega first started Cao Chocolates in 2009 with a simple and delicious mission: bring higher quality chocolate to homes across America. Ricardo and Anelith are originally from Venezuela but have since moved to Miami, Florida where Cao Chocolates is based today.

Cao Chocolates are made from two simple ingredients: cacao and cane sugar. The key to achieving such a tasty product with minimal ingredients is by sourcing high-quality cacao from places such as Brazil, Madagascar, Honduras, Nicaragua, and other countries.

Today they work with many Fortune 500 companies for corporate events and usually ship their products out in bulk. Like many businesses during the pandemic, they shifted their focus to online sales through the use of their Shopify store.

Initially, shifting to a primarily online selling business model was a hassle. Going to the carriers directly to print shipping labels for up to 400 orders at a time was costly and time-consuming. They tried using multi-carrier software shipping solutions like Pirate Ship to save money but ultimately found that they were too difficult to use.

They needed a platform that could connect to their Shopify store but didn’t require them to know how to code. Finally, in 2021, they turned to the Shippo Web App.

“Shippo has the best rates, and it is easy to connect to Shopify – you just upload a list and that’s it. And we can track the packages in the same place, so I don’t need to go to UPS.com. I can do everything within Shippo!”, said Anelith.

The result of that connection has been time and money saved by Cao Chocolates.

“We used to dedicate at least 25% of our time in the shipping process – packaging, labeling, dropping packages off, and notifying customers. With Shippo, that percentage was reduced to 12% with the use of your template, freight rate, instant availability of the system, and the ease of using the platform itself. The fact that Shippo can notify our customers when shipping has been processed has helped us save a lot of time”, said Anelith.

“We wish we found you guys in 2020! We easily could’ve saved $8,000-$10,000 in just shipping”, stated Ricardo.

Check out our Cao Chocolates Case Study to find out more on how this power couple has achieved shipping success through Shippo for Shopify shipping.

Lyrically Correct: Fun Music Trivia To Spice Up Game Night

Everyone loves a quality game night. Competing with friends over food and drinks is always a good time but certain games can be more strategic, slower, and start to dull out the rhythm of the night. That’s where Lyrically Correct shakes things up.

Founded by couples Dee & Tiffany as well as Juelz & Nikki, they sought to spice up game nights through music trivia that represented black culture across different genres and time periods. The couples acted fast, having initially started business in March of 2020 and were selling by September of 2020.

With a love of music being so universal, they quickly saw sales pick up. Initially, they were going to the post office every day to scan and send out shipments. But, they soon found that was not conducive to growing and scaling their business.

“Our business had scaled as a whole with an increase in orders over the year. We could no longer have orders scanned individually at the post office and processing these individual orders within Shopify without a manifest just slowed us down”, noted Tiffany.

Their solution came in the form of the Shippo app, located within the Shopify App Store. After that, they were assigned an account executive that walked them through how to use the app to best serve Lyrically Correct’s shipping functions.

“Anything that is too technical or hard to use is an absolute no. Shippo was extremely easy to use! Anything we didn’t understand, your team was there to support us”, shared Tiffany.

Lyrically Correct has now been able to ramp up its shipping capabilities by 3X as well as ship out orders within 24-48 hours. Through the use of multiple carriers through the Shippo app, Lyrically Correct has seen an average transit time of only 3 days which means their customers are getting their products sooner.

Read our Lyrically Correct Case Study to see how this black-owned business has been able to spread fun and culture all across America through better Shopify shipping.

Roshambo Eyewear: Flexible, Durable, Safe Eyewear For Babies, Toddlers, And Parents

Roshambo Eyewear is a family-owned and operated eyewear business with a focus on providing quality prescription and non-prescription glasses for families of all sizes.

Roshambo started after Scott and Julia saw a need for better glasses for their two children. With that in mind, Roshambo Eyewear was born. Roshambo Eyewear prides itself on delivering glasses that are lead and latex-free, BPA, and small parts tested for babies as well as flexible and virtually unbreakable. But while focused on kids, Roshambo has since expanded its line up to 5 different sizes so the whole family can match.

They also pride themselves on donating a portion of their sales to Autism charities as Autism affects their family. The name Ro-Sham-Bo comes from the game Rock Paper Scissors which is used as a teaching tool for children with Autism.

Along with having a unique family and a unique product, their shipping challenges were also uncommon.

Roshambo has multiple product lines that take different amounts of time to package and ship. They also import their frames from Italy and assemble them in San Diego, California before they are shipped out to customers so there is international shipping to factor into their day-to-day operations.

Starting out as a home-based business, navigating through these challenges seemed extremely difficult. That was until they connected their Shippo account to their Shopify store.

“Finally, we could easily tag orders into categories, read order notes right from the orders homepage, easily batch buy, choose carriers and rates, and bulk print labels in one easy step. At the time we were still a home-based business, but the tools we put to use are equally effective now that we process hundreds of orders per week instead of dozens. I can’t imagine running our prescription fulfillment business without Shippo’s interface,” said Scott.

As Roshombo has grown to become a household name, Shippo has also grown and has been able to add features that directly benefit businesses like Roshambo.

To find out how, check out our Roshambo Baby Case Study.

Vontelle: Stylish and Vibrant Eyewear Featuring Afro-Latinx Inspired Designs

Vontelle is a female and black-owned business with a mission to sell eyewear that is vibrant, fashion-forward, and is made for those in underrepresented communities.

The story of Vontelle comes when Tracy Vontélle Green and Nancey Harris both lost their glasses and set out to find new ones. Their goal was to buy from a black-owned business but after searching the market, they were unable to find one. The brands they tried didn’t understand their facial structure or their style and they knew they weren’t alone in this problem.

That’s why they decided to solve this problem themselves by introducing Vontelle. They sell prescription glasses in 31 unique afro-latinx inspired designs as well as sunglasses in similar designs.

But, even though just getting started was difficult enough given the fact that they were in a male-dominated industry, they also faced a number of different shipping obstacles.

After trying different types of multi-carrier shipping software they ultimately decided to use Shippo in January 2021.

“After weighing the benefits of what Shippo had to offer, Shippo’s shipping rates were the most competitive. Even Shippo’s annual rates were better than everyone else,” said Nancey. “We get orders everyday, the best part is Shippo is linked to our Shopify so we don’t have to type in any names, the orders are already there.”

Since they’ve integrated Shippo into their Shopify store, the Vontelle team has been able to save on average about 30% on first-class shipments, 36% for shipments using priority mail, and 40% on ground shipping. And these percentages include shipping insurance.

To learn more about how Vontelle has been able to grow their operations through shipping, check out our Vontelle Case Study.

And to see how much you could save by using Shippo, simply sign up for free and start comparing rates with the nation’s top carriers.