Vulpes Goods Automates & Scales Their E-Commerce Operations

How Jelle and the team at Vulpes Goods grew from manual spreadsheets to handling over 1,000 daily orders with the help of ChannelDock.

Background

Q: Tell us about your brand — what do you sell?
Jelle: We sell a lot of different items, all items are for daily use. They go from pet items to pregnancy items.

Q: Which marketplaces or webshops are your main sales channels?
Jelle: We actually have a lot of marketplaces that we sell on. In The Netherlands we focus mainly on Bol.com, our own webshop (vulpesgoods.com), Praxis, Mediamarkt and ANWB. Outside of The Netherlands we are selling on Kaufland, BRICO, Leroy Merlin, Mediamarkt DE, Obelink and Amazon. All platforms are just online sales, not in stores (yet).

Q: How did you manage orders and inventory before using ChannelDock?
Jelle: We actually almost didn’t. Before we used ChannelDock we had made a spreadsheet with all the items that we sell and then we would just type them in the spreadsheet. Doing this once or twice a month to keep our stock “updated”.

Q: What tools or software were you using before?
Jelle: We didn’t really use any tools or software, only Excel to keep track of stuff.

Q: How did those systems limit your growth?
Jelle: I think that we got really limited by the data that we had. We were never 100% sure that we had items in stock. I have had to mail customers so many times to say we didn’t have the item in stock anymore. It was embarrassing.

The Challenge

Q: What was the biggest frustration in your daily operations?
Jelle: That we were never 100% sure if we actually had the stock that we said we had. It was also really difficult to plan ahead with new stock purchases because everything was done manually.

Q: Did you experience issues like overselling, slow fulfillment, or stock inaccuracies?
Jelle: Yes, almost every day we faced this issue.

Q: What made you realize you needed to change your setup?
Jelle: A change in the management. We started growing and realising that we needed to up our game. New members were hired to the team who started looking for this change and made it happen.

Q: How much time did manual work take before switching to ChannelDock?
Jelle: We were counting items once every week to make sure stock was in sync. And the reorders took a lot longer than they do now.

Q: How were these challenges affecting your sales or customer experience?
Jelle: They were not good for the customers, I had to send out a lot of messages that we were out of stock. Which was a very annoying thing to do.

The Solution

Q: What made you choose ChannelDock over other platforms?
Jelle: The price to product ratio was way better than most of the other platforms. We had talked to a few platforms to create a stocking platform, but they were really expensive and didn’t really offer anything more than ChannelDock does.

Q: How was your onboarding experience?
Jelle: The onboarding was really nice, they are very helpful and fast. Making every issue that we faced go away within a day.

Q: How quickly did you start seeing results?
Jelle: From the first day we already noticed the difference. Before ChannelDock we printed the labels by going into the Bol.com account and selecting 25 orders and print them. This took around 1–2 minutes per order. We can now do 200–300 orders within 2 hours. Massive progress.

Q: Which features make the biggest impact for you?
Jelle: Almost all features give a really big impact. Real time inventory, automatic shipping labels, stock advice, being able to connect multiple sales channels into one system.

Q: How does ChannelDock simplify your workflow day to day?
Jelle: Makes everything very easy and smooth to use. Can’t imagine going a day without using ChannelDock.

Q: How does it support your international or multi-channel growth?
Jelle: It helps us grow a lot. Since we can add more channels, it makes it really easy to grow.

The Impact

Q: How has ChannelDock changed the way you run your business?
Jelle: We are now very focused on automizing things. Instead of doing it all manually, we are now going towards very smooth and fast workflows.

Q: Have you noticed improvements in accuracy, speed, or efficiency?
Jelle: Yes, we have noticed improvements in speed and efficiency!

Q: Can you share any measurable results?
Jelle: The biggest improvement that we can measure is time saved in the amount of orders that we can pack per day. We used to do 300 orders in a day and barely make it, we can now do 1,000–1,200 per day in the same time window.

Q: What feedback have you received from customers or your team?
Jelle: The team thinks it’s a really big step up for the company, because it really helps us to grow!

Q: How does ChannelDock help you focus on growth instead of daily operations?
Jelle: It helps us focus on growth because we no longer waste as much time on packing anymore. We can now handle a lot more sales. Which makes it so that we can also focus on growing and growing.

Final Thoughts

Q: What do you appreciate most about ChannelDock?
Jelle: The customer support. A lot of companies that we work with are very late with their response time. If I send a message to Lori or Dalila, the response time is insane. They try to beat the bot that’s in the support chat. Compliments to both!

Q: What would you say to other sellers still managing things manually?
Jelle: Just make the change, the price is worth it.

Q: What advice would you give to new e-commerce sellers starting out?
Jelle: Start out doing it manually, but don’t do this for too long. Maybe for the first year to see how fast you can grow on your own. After that make the step and go for a stock system that offers all that ChannelDock has to offer. You will see the change that they can make.

Q: How do you see your brand evolving, and how will ChannelDock play a role in that growth?
Jelle: We are working on growing internationally. ChannelDock helps us do this because we can just add contracts to make sure every single country has their own shipping method. They also help us focus more on sales channels such as Kaufland and Leroy Merlin. We are still looking for more channels that we can expand to, ChannelDock gives us the option to do this.

Q: Any fun or surprising moments since joining ChannelDock?
Jelle: The fun moments we are having are the moments that we can now invest into the company because we no longer waste as much time.

Q: If you could describe ChannelDock in one word, what would it be — and why?
Jelle: Helpful. The reason for this is because they are always ready to help and are not scared of a challenge.