In today’s dynamic retail landscape, meeting consumers where they shop is crucial for success. That means selling across all the channels where they shop. And today, more than 70% of consumers shop across two or more channels, according to research from IBM and the National Retail Federation.
For JLab, a leading audio electronics brand, this meant investing in channels beyond its successful Amazon.com presence to create a truly omnichannel experience.
“There are billions of people in the world, and they all shop differently. They shop where they’re comfortable,” explains Ryan Carlson, Ecommerce Growth Manager at JLab. “In today’s landscape, you have to meet people where they are. And if you don’t, you’re leaving money on the table.”
Although JLab’s Amazon Store was the business’s bread and butter, the team knew it needed to expand its direct-to-consumer (DTC) selling strategy to meet its shoppers in more places. “So, the idea was ‘How can we augment our Amazon business with our DTC site?’” says JLab Chief Digital Officer Andrew Curtis.
However, scaling across multiple channels while maintaining customer satisfaction and achieving operational efficiency proved to be a challenge.
Although JLab was using a 3PL, mainly for its B2B side of the business, the company needed a 3PL that could keep pace with its growth plans for the DTC side.
More specifically, it needed a 3PL that could:
- Ramp up quickly with capabilities to scale. JLab was looking to expand quickly, but Andrew was worried, first, about the lead time in onboarding a new 3PL and integrating with its systems and, second, how easily the 3PL could take on new channels and even regions.
- Deliver customers’ orders fast and on time. The JLab team was used to the exceptional fulfillment experience that Amazon.com customers got and wanted a similar experience for its DTC customers. “If I turn on a new channel on Monday and orders start flowing in, some 3PLs won’t ship them until the following Monday,” Andrew explains. “That’s a huge challenge for us, and for our customers.”
- Handle large order volumes and fluctuations in demand. “Forecasting and inventory management are tough when you go into new markets. You don’t really know what’s going to happen,” Andrew says, pointing to viral moments on TikTok as an example. “If your 3PL doesn’t get it right, you’re going to run out of inventory really quick and customers might not get their orders.”
The first step in enhancing JLab.com was taking the shopping benefits that Prime members love on Amazon.com, and offering them directly on the company’s ecommerce site through Buy with Prime. This allowed JLab to offer the same fast, free delivery and easy returns that Prime members get on its Amazon Store on its site. Prime members who check out with Buy with Prime can get their orders shipped in as fast as one day, and the JLab team can sit back while Amazon handles the picking, packing, and shipping of those orders.
Because JLab already had inventory in Amazon fulfillment centers for its Amazon.com business, Buy with Prime orders were pulled from that single pool of strategically distributed inventory. On the back end, Amazon uses its 3PL service, Amazon Multi-Channel Channel Fulfillment (MCF), to fulfill those orders.
“Amazon Prime has changed everybody’s expectations for delivery, and the shopping experience overall,” Ryan says. “Using third-party partners, we weren’t able to keep up with that as much as we’ve been able to with MCF, let alone being able to offer Prime shopping on our site.”
From there, the team saw the potential and decided to leverage MCF to fulfill orders across its other channels—and eventually other regions. This helped simplify the onboarding and scaling process, says Andrew. “It’s been easy to just turn it on for any marketplace or channel.”
JLab uses MCF to fulfill website orders, including Buy with Prime, and orders across TikTok Shop, eBay, New Egg, and Best Buy Canada. “When you’re inventory constrained, it can become a headache very quickly, and the people who feel that headache the most are actually the customers,” Andrew explains. “That’s the last thing we want, so having a dynamic, single source of inventory is a huge benefit.”
MCF has also given JLab the agility to handle fluctuations in demand. “Scalability was huge—being able to just drop another 1,000 orders and have them all shipped with no problems,” Andrew says. “That’s night and day compared to other 3PLs, and really the reason we chose MCF.”
Today, JLab uses the Amazon MCF and Buy with Prime app for Shopify on its ecommerce site, which integrates the two services seamlessly into its Shopify site and cart with a single app. It allows shoppers to add products that are activated with Buy with Prime and those activated with MCF into a single cart and transaction. On the back end, MCF fulfills the entire order, including the items that are Prime eligible.
“Using the Amazon MCF and Buy with Prime app not only makes the shopping experience smoother, but also allows us to offer all the special stuff that we’ve been doing for our existing site customers to Prime members, like some of the discount codes that we only offer on our site,” Ryan explains. “Now they work for any product in the cart—even those with Buy with Prime—so we’re actually hooking up Prime members even more.”
In addition to simplified inventory management and fulfillment operations, MCF has helped JLab scale across channels and regions without the lengthy lead times or painful system integrations that Andrew dreaded. After starting in the US, JLab now uses MCF as its 3PL in Canada, the UK, Germany, France, and Australia.
Across channels, JLab has been able to truly deliver for its customer in the way that the team hoped when they decided to invest more in the company’s website and broader DTC strategy.
The implementation of MCF, as well as Buy with Prime, has led to impressive results across multiple fronts, including:
- Fulfillment speed and efficiency: Amazon distributes JLab’s inventory across regions and ensures there’s enough allocated to the channels where JLab sells its headphones and accessories. This not only improves operational efficiency for JLab, but also means inventory is placed closer to JLab’s customers for faster delivery. Andrew says orders fulfilled by MCF average about 1.5 days, whereas the electronics category overall averages about 5 days.
- Shopper trust and conversion: Because JLab uses MCF for all the SKUs on its site, shoppers can see fast delivery estimates on all the detail pages for those products. Merchants that use MCF get access to fast badges that display dynamic delivery estimates based on the shopper’s zip code. Being able to see delivery estimates at a key point in the shopper journey helps boost purchase confidence—so much that it’s increasing shopper conversion for JLab. “The MCF fast badges answer the shopper’s question before they would normally get it—and with a good answer on top of that—helping show that we’re trustworthy and reliable,” Andrew says. “Seeing our fast delivery times has completely changed our shopper conversion rate. As soon as we turned fast badges on, it happened almost overnight. We saw a 55.9% increase in conversion rate.”
- Higher average order value: The team also sees Buy with Prime as a trust booster for the brand. “Having the Prime logo and Amazon reviews next to products that offer Buy with Prime on our site helps give us credibility,” Ryan says. “It tells shoppers that we’re a legit company.” And this shopper confidence has actually translated to higher cart values for Buy with Prime orders. “For shoppers who might not be familiar with our brand, being able to use Prime on our site removes any worry,” he explains. “We see Prime members spending at a higher level on our site, with average order value for Buy with Prime orders being 37.5% higher than standard orders.”
Looking ahead, Andrew, Ryan, and team are excited about optimizing MCF and Buy with Prime even more, including expanding the use of fast badges. “We’re going to leverage the heck out of fast badges next year,” Andrew declares. “It’s on our roadmap for Q1 to make them follow the customer throughout the entire checkout process.”
And although the team has seen an uplift in orders per day since upgrading to the MCF and Buy with Prime app, with the integrated cart experience, “we haven’t even fully maximized the potential yet, so we’re excited to see where it’s at in 23 months,” Ryan says. Since adopting the two services, JLab has built a robust foundation for continued omnichannel growth, proving that with the right 3PL, ecommerce brands can successfully meet consumers wherever they choose to shop.