Download the case study here.
Great Timing for a Great Idea
In 2020, Matt Walsh, CEO and co-founder of TrophySmack, secured a $600,000 investment from Mark Cuban on the long-running television show Shark Tank. The investment would support the rapid growth of the company, which sought to reinvent how custom fantasy league trophies, belts, and rings are ordered, assembled, and delivered.
“TrophySmack was just kind of a flash-in-the-pan, organic entrepreneurial idea,” said Matt. “As a new dad with a new circle of dad friends, I joined a fantasy football league that had existed for a long time. Amazingly, I made the finals in my first season. I went online to buy the most ridiculously boastful trophy I could find, but my Google search results showed me the same generic options.”
Matt grew increasingly frustrated the more he researched. He learned that the trophy industry is built upon an ancient business model where brick-and-mortar, mom-and-pop shops turn out similar, unimpressive products.
“I discovered that the reason I couldn’t find a six-foot-tall custom trophy was because the only place to source components was from a supply chain that wasn’t structured for e-commerce,” said Matt. “To confirm this, I disassembled old childhood trophies and saw just how inefficient the construction process was.”
Matt aspired to create a new supply chain by sourcing every single modular trophy component offered to customers. However, when TrophySmack started, it worked with a third-party logistics provider that could only ship configurable parts and not personalized products. This meant that Matt needed a partner to fully integrate the customization process with the fulfillment process.
The goal was to leverage a fully digitized supply chain to support a personalized, on-demand order fulfillment model, complete with a comprehensive and scalable inventory, order, sales channel, and shipping optimization platform.
Matt had grand plans. However, he didn’t have the technology he needed to turn those plans into reality—until he found Etail Solutions.
Etail Solutions Improved Internal Processes
Etail Solutions provided TrophySmack with a single point of integration and coordination. By drawing in and routing all data relating to customization and personalization, Etail Solutions sends information to the appropriate processing machines in a manner that enables an assemble-to-order warehouse operation.
Essentially, TrophySmack customers can personalize designs by selecting components and adding text and images. The digital designs are then sent through workflow and execution management processes to offshore graphic design teams as needed.
Once the required engraving or printing files are prepared, they are uploaded to the relevant engraving, ultraviolet printing, or sublimation machines. The same information is used to create packing slips with custom images and text, supporting pre-shipment quality assurance checks and confirming that customers’ customized products reflect the designs created during order entry.
“At an earlier phase in the business, we had our sales channels running through Shopify,” said Matt. “But Shopify has its limitations. So we had to develop a lot of workarounds just to get it to function for us. One of the best things about working with the Etail Solutions team is they eliminated the workarounds. Now, Shopify is just one of many sales channels.”
“The Etail Solutions team takes the time to understand your business, so you can be confident that what they come up with will be responsive to your needs and deliver value.”
Matt Walsh
CEO and co-founder, TrophySmack
It’s All About the Supply Chain
Etail Solutions’s SaaS application streamlines and optimizes supply chain operations. It integrates and orchestrates e-commerce channels and supply chain processes, incorporating algorithms and predictive analytics. It also optimizes inventory levels, order fulfillment, cartonization, and least-cost worldwide shipment manifesting while responding to multiple seasonal peaks in demand that range from 500 percent to 2,000 percent.
TrophySmack’s extended supply chain begins with component and finished stock manufacturing in China based on bulk purchase orders. Established commercial arrangements allow the final mix of products, colors, and materials to be determined before shipment.
Etail Solutions streamlines TrophySmack’s supply chain and production processes in the areas of inventory management, inventory control, order customization, dynamic building of engraving files, and the pick, pack, and shipment of products.
Inventory Management
Etail Solutions enables the use of stock coming from third party logistics providers and TrophySmack’s own warehouse. TrophySmack receives near real-time updates to ensure that kits are taken offline as base items are sold across multiple sales channels. This is a complex process since a single quantity change in a base item could impact more than two hundred sales listings. This allows TrophySmack to track and manage their inventory on-demand, reducing overall costs and ensures the right products get to the right locations at the right time, improving delivery rates for customers.
Inventory Control
TrophySmack has migrated most of its order fulfillment from third-party logistics providers to its own warehouse by leveraging Etail Solutions’s inventory control capabilities to track receipts and store items in associated physical locations. This includes tracking inventory in sea containers at a staging warehouse and handling replenishment to the main warehouse. Moving order fulfillment to their homebase improves TrophySmack’s ability to better control and streamline order fulfillment, improving speed of delivery.
Order Customization
TrophySmack can now pull sales order customization details from the sales channel, routing it as needed to a graphic designer, work queue managers, and sublimation and ultraviolet printers.
Dynamic Building of Engraving Files
Engraving files are automatically created based on required stock color, template, and customer-entered text options, such as team, winner, year, league name, and so on.
Pick, Pack, and Shipment Products
The pick, pack, and shipment of configured on-demand or stock items, including bulk picking, sales order build sheets, and packing lists using customer configuration option details, are downloaded from the sales channel completely streamlining the fulfillment process.
Redefining an Industry
TrophySmack sought to redefine the conventional fantasy league trophy industry. Identifying an outdated business model and a non-existent e-commerce-friendly supply chain, Matt envisioned a new approach to custom trophies.
The main hurdle was the absence of efficient technology to combine customization with fulfillment. This gap was bridged by Etail Solutions, which brought about revolutionary changes in internal processes and optimized the supply chain.
With capabilities that eliminated prior workarounds, real-time inventory management, intricate inventory control, and smooth order customization, Etail Solutions played an instrumental role in streamlining TrophySmack’s operations. The partnership not only embodied the aspiration of bringing personalization to a stagnant industry but also showcased the vital importance of a digitized and efficient supply chain in modern e-commerce.
Outstanding Results
Fully-Integrated Partnership
“I can ask questions about nearly anything and receive an answer from the Etail Solutions team, whom I implicitly trust,” said Matt. “Our relationship isn’t transactional. It’s a true partnership.”
Improved Efficiency
By eliminating the manual management of Google spreadsheets, Etail Solutions gave TrophySmack a trustworthy single source of coordination. This facilitated TrophySmack’s ability to improve the efficiency of shipping custom orders at scale.
80 Percent Overhead Reduction
“The Etail Solutions team opened up our ability scale because of the efficiencies they brought to the table,” said Matt. “I can confidently say that they cut 80 percent of the overhead involved with how we were managing production by leveraging their software and the specialized workflows they developed just for us.”
400 Percent Revenue Growth
“We were at two million in revenue when we found Etail Solutions,” said Matt. “Now, we’ve passed ten million in revenue three years later.”