With more consumers looking for in-store shopping experiences, the age of online-only is slowly fading. Brands that want to continue to gain traction, expand their reach, and cater to a wider audience will need to begin dipping their toes into retail.
However, it’s not easy to develop a seamless omnichannel fulfillment strategy. Each channel may have different requirements regarding timeliness, packaging processes, and labeling. Plus, it can be incredibly costly. This is where an experienced, flexible 3PL can make a world of difference.
When beverage brand Hiyo was searching for a fulfillment partner to support their expanding business, they knew they needed a 3PL that would work as an extension of their brand, helping them optimize their omnichannel fulfillment with a strategic, cost-effective strategy.
With Kase’s scalable, nationwide fulfillment, Hiyo unlocked:
After two years of development, Hiyo launched in 2021 to fill the gap for a better-than-alcohol alternative.™ Loaded with organic, functional ingredients, Hiyo is a social tonic designed to boost moods, amplifying a relaxed feeling known to Hiyo lovers as “the float.”
With a myriad of vendor partners and a complicated supply chain, Hiyo is truly a labor of love. Based in Los Angeles but popular across the country, the alcohol-alternative brand caters to a nationwide audience, standing out as a non-coastal brand with broad appeal.
Hiyo began searching for a fulfillment partner pre-launch. With big goals in the short-term and even larger growth plans for the future, they knew they needed a partner who could confidently scale alongside them while providing:
With a referral from a trusted partner, Hiyo reached out to Kase for its modern fulfillment technology, operational expertise, flexibility, and cost-saving tactics.
In addition to expertise within the ecommerce and retail space, Hiyo has benefited from Kase’s agility when it comes to customer demand. “If we’re pushing a big promotion, we just have to give Kase a quick heads up and they staff accordingly to meet expected surges in demand,” says Dampf.
Whether products are being shipped to a customer’s doorstep or a retail distribution center, a successful fulfillment operation requires technologies and processes in perfect synchronization.
From handling the intricate needs of large retail partners to managing the demands of D2C customers, Kase’s flexibility and value-added services have been crucial for Hiyo’s omnichannel fulfillment strategy.
Hiyo was originally built as a direct-to-consumer brand and has grown an established online presence with 100K total online followers, but they’ve recently expanded to major retail stores to reach even more of their target market, working with retailers like Sprouts, Whole Foods, Wegmans, and more.
When Hiyo began branching out, Kase revamped its fulfillment strategy to handle the growing brand’s larger retail orders. From picking, packing, and palletizing freight shipments with specific specs to handling unique placarding and labeling, Kase ensures Hiyo’s products arrive accurately and undamaged to stores nationwide.
“Kase has been a crucial partner for our small parcel fulfillment, but they were also able to pivot their fulfillment approach when we began selling in-store,” says Dampf.
In addition to online and offline channels, Hiyo recently implemented Amazon FBA preparation with Kase . After a quick integration to the Hiyo Amazon store, Kase was able to review and ship orders out in just five days. The results? Hiyo now can offer same-day shipping seven days per week leveraging Kase’s Amazon Shipping partnership.
Every pallet is strapped, wrapped, and strongly secured to ensure no damage in transit to retailers.
Minimizing damage and picks with optimized packaging
In ecommerce, packaging is paramount. Not only does it keep products safe and delight consumers during unboxing, but it also determines overall shipping costs. For beverage brands especially, packaging can make or break whether a pack of cans arrives in pristine condition.
With Hiyo’s most commonly ordered SKU being a Variety Pack, they weren’t originally set up for efficiency in how they were picking and packing orders. Kase worked with the brand to design new shipper boxes that accomplished a few things:
Previously, Kase had to do 3 to 4 picks per order to create the Variety Pack. Now, their variety pack arrives at Kase’s warehouse in one case, eliminating the picking, packing, and processing fees that were adding up with their unoptimized packaging.
The results? Hiyo’s newly designed boxes are perfectly snug to their product, effectively minimizing damages in transit. Plus, they’re saving money on every order with a more efficient process that requires fewer touches.
Unlocking a multi-node fulfillment strategy
When Hiyo launched, they were fulfilling orders from Kase’s Southern Califonia warehouse. But with the brand’s nationwide audience, the 3PL identified an opportunity to reduce postage costs with a strategic multi-node approach.
“Hiyo’s customer base is spread out across the country. With this in mind, we developed an outbound shipping cost analysis to determine savings from launching additional fulfillment nodes, such as Dallas,” says Patrick Casey, Director of Operations at Kase.
With the addition of Kase’s Dallas fulfillment center, Hiyo is expected to save an average of 33% on priority mail and UPS ground shipping to all shipping zones from Dallas. Currently, Hiyo takes full advantage of Kase’s multi-node expertise with fufillment operations in three different locations:
33%
reduction in average shipping costs per order with multinode fulfillment
Plus, with Kase’s intuitive technology, Hiyo can easily swap back and forth between warehouses to get a holistic view of each location’s operation. And, if they have a high-priority request, Hiyo has direct contacts at each warehouse.
Real-time visibility and control
For the beverage industry, having complete visibility and control is especially important for getting orders to retailers on time, tracking inventory and stock levels, and making sure the end-consumer always knows where their product is.
“Having access to real-time inventory visibility, order flow, and stock levels has been crucial to our business,” says Dampf. “If a customer or our team has a question about an order, we always know where it is, why it has or hasn’t shipped, and the routing of orders between our warehouses.”
Kase’s intuitive dashboard makes it easy for your the Hiyo team to keep an eye on every aspect of their fulfillment operation. Complete with an inventory and order snapshot, brands can easily identify the status of their operation every step of the way.
For the most efficient, real-time operation, brands need to engage with a 3PL that can integrate directly with their ecommerce shopping cart. Hiyo uses Shopify, and leverages Kase’s integration to automate their fulfillment processes. Once an order is placed on Hiyo’s Shopify store, the Kase app identifies all details, starting the order fulfillment cycle with no need for manual intervention.
“The integration with Shopify is performing very well, and it’s simple to keep up-to-date,” says Dampf. “With our recent packaging change, we had to relink a few things within Kase, and all of the history immediately synced over to Shopify with no hiccups.”
Without well-documented and open API, ecommerce businesses are at the discretion of their 3PL’s standardized reporting. Kase’s open API gives brands full control over the types of data they want visibility into.
Hiyo uses the Kase API to automatically import all data from the Kase platform into a variety of different places including their ERP system for order visibility and business intelligence tool for shipping and freight analysis.
Hiyo can easily filter and view company metrics, as well as receive standardized reports for products, order lists, inventory, billing, and more.
What’s next for Hiyo?
As Hiyo continues to expand its business, the popular beverage brand expects its partnership with Kase to grow as well.
With volume expected to increase across all of its channels, but especially its retail channel, Hiyo looks forward to Kase further building out its B2B order capabilities and helping the beverage brand open additional distribution channels.
The goal? To get closer to their end consumer as efficiently and effectively as possible—and keep a great partnership going at the same time.
Hiyo is an organic social tonic crafted with adaptogens, nootropics, and functional botanicals to be the better-than-alcohol alternative.™ Mindfully crafted with premium ingredients like ashwagandha, lion’s mane, l-theanine, lemon balm, passion flower, and ginger, each can of Hiyo produces a delightful sensation that we like to call “the float.” Hiyo comes in four refreshing flavors: Blackberry Lemon, Peach Mango, Strawberry Guava, and Watermelon Lime. To learn more about hiyo please visit: drinkhiyo.com
Founded in 2015, Kase is a nationwide provider of cloud-based logistics and ecommerce fulfillment services for consumer product companies worldwide. We have built our own industry-leading WMS to fully optimize ecommerce logistics. In 2024, Kase was acquired by WSI (Warehouse Specialists, LLC) to support its ecommerce growth.
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