Customer Profile
Products: Grocery and dry goods
Fulfillment: Cross-docking; pick, pack and ship
Channels: Amazon, eBay, Walmart, Target CVS, Google Shopping and many others
The Goal
Offer consumer package goods manufacturers a complete solution for optimizing online sales including D2C fulfillment, multi-channel listing management and optimization, and analytics.
The Result
Currently working with more than 300 brands including SC Johnson, Kraft, Heinz and Nestle.
The Future
CPG.IO plans to continue to innovate in helping brands sell online while partnering with 3PLs and the Etail 3PL Fulfillment Network to broaden their 1-&-2 day delivery capabilities.
In His Own Words
John Holby, CEO of CPG.IO on the value delivered by Etail Solutions
First Class Functionality
“Etail has been a great partner. They are flexible enough to meet the needs and changes of a rapidly growing company while delivering first-class functionality. Much of what we do is built on Etail and they have the ability to scale up as we do.”
Growing Together
“We like to think we are growing with you guys. We brought lot of special requests to Etail which later became part of the product. The company is agile and customer focused.”
Tools to Help Customers
“Over the years, Etail has stepped up to give us a lot more tools we can use to help our customers. We’ve been very happy with the partnership.”
John Holby and his partners saw the problem.
Brands were losing control.
Faced with booming ecommerce sales, major consumer packaged good marketers were under pressure to grow online sales–but few had any experience with the complexities of multi-channel, on-line marketing.
Traditional 3PLs could offer distribution, but had little capability to help data-hungry marketers with data and listing management and analytics. Third-party sellers could handle listing management – but sometimes at the expense of the brand image and equity… which had often been built over many years into multi-million dollar assets.
“A lot of brands were getting feed up with some third-party sellers. It was like the Wild West out there. Some called it ‘market place mayhem’,” John said.
He said marketers, used to having a lot of control over the merchandising of their products at traditional retail outlets, were finding they often had little control over third-party sellers and their misuse of brand images, logos, listing copy and even MAP pricing.
So he decided to give marketers back power over their brands. He and his partners started CPG.IO.
“We help marketers get their products optimized for online sales,” John said. “We are a one stop shop to handle distribution and streamline listings with the right images, right copy and right pricing.”
Today, CPG.IO works with more than 300 brands including blue-chip brands from companies such as SC Johnson, Tyson, McCormick and O’Ceder.
They distribute more than 150,000 items, mostly through cross-docking but they also keep 5,000 “high velocity” SKUs in their warehouses for pick-and-pack fulfillment.
Using the Etail platform, they offer brand marketers a quick path to distribution on dozens of online marketplaces and integration with the brand’s direct-to-consumer websites. Then they partner with the brands to manage and optimize listings, protect brand equity, analyze results and create strategies for online growth.
“We’re like a super 3PL,” John said. “We see 3PLs trying to do more of what we do. They tend to be good at distribution and maybe good at technology. We are a hybrid of a 3PL, a marketing agency and a technology partner.”
An emphasis on partnership is key to CPG.IO’s relationship with its client brands, John said.
“We don’t just hold product and fulfill orders, we look at our relationships with brands as partners. We are doing forecasting, providing input on marketing products, and offering merchandising recommendations while not cannibalizing their other channels.”
John said leveraging Etail’s capability to manage kits and bundles offers a good example of how companies can extend their brand equity online through creative merchandising.
“One of our clients is Old Bay seasoning,” John said. “They have almost a cult-like following. So they buy a lot of branded tchotchkes like aprons, baseball caps and cooking utensils and we create kits. Kits offer expensive, high-ring merchandise that isn’t the norm in the grocery business. And they look great in an online store. In ecommerce, we tend is dismiss kits as nothing new, but marketers are getting accolades within their companies for being so innovative. And it really helps keep that special connection they have with customers.”
Data and reporting is another often overlooked area where fulfillment partners can add value, John said. Using Etail’s reporting capabilities, CPG.IO is developing a portal for employees and client brand managers.
“As an ecommerce brand manager, there are just a lot of things to do,” John said. “We provide ways of helping managers decide what to focus on. I’m always amazed by the data Etail provides. Etail gives us the information, we just present it in different ways.”