A Sellercloud case study with Palatize

Introduction

How Sellercloud helped Palatize eliminate purchasing and inventory issues and turn their small family-run FBA business into a thriving e-commerce company fulfilling their own orders from their 25,000 square foot warehouse.

Founded

2017

Headquarters:

Midway, GA

Company Size

11-50 employees

Before Sellercloud

! Palatize is a primarily FBA (Fulfilled By Amazon) business set up by two brothers several years ago in Midway, Georgia. “We sell about 80% grocery products and also household items and home and kitchen,” Co-owner Jonathan Stewart tells us.

The family business started when Stewart’s brother’s previous business failed, leaving him with inventory he didn’t know what to do with. “We actually started off by selling just items that were around the house effectively from other businesses,” said Stewart. “We actually discovered, hey, you can make some money selling these items, on Amazon in our case.”

After a few years of success, Palatize began to set its sights beyond FBA. “We wanted to switch from being a primary FBA company to a merchant fulfilled company because it gives you more control over your future and your outcomes,” explained Stewart. He elaborated that an FBA business can struggle with lost inventory, damaged goods, and expired inventory. “There’s a lot of headaches in dealing with FBA and being able to primarily switch towards a merchant fulfilled structure would be that you don’t have to deal with that.”

Palatize had to work around their previous e-commerce solution, which led to inefficiencies and cost them valuable time in manual processes. For example, the software could not receive several POs (Purchase Orders) simultaneously, did not enable Palatize to bulk upload products to their catalog and onto marketplaces, and did not support custom columns and fields. “We couldn’t manipulate the data in a usable way,” said Stewart.

The solution

When Palatize began their hunt for a better, more comprehensive e-commerce solution, there was one key thing they were looking for—innovation—and it was during a user conference that they realized Sellercloud was the right solution for them. “Sellercloud would show all of the great new features that became available, and so what we saw was that Sellercloud was a company that evolved their software more so than other options,” said Stewart.

Palatize found that Sellercloud excelled at customization, listing products on new marketplaces, and keeping inventory in sync, packed full of features to better manage their FBA operations, enabling them to spend more time expanding to new channels. Stewart explains how he is responsible for purchasing for the company and praised Sellercloud’s predictive purchasing features, which enabled Palatize to export data, manipulate it, and make purchasing decisions.

Another excellent feature that has made work easier for Palatize is the ability to create ASINs (Amazon Standard Identification Numbers) within Sellercloud. “Now that Sellercloud is able to create new ASINs on Amazon just straight through the software, we are really looking forward to taking advantage of that service,” said Stewart. He also noted how Sellercloud enables Palatize to create GTIN-exempt ASINs, saving prep time for many items.

Palatize also utilizes Shipbridge, Sellercloud’s shipping application, and Skustack, Sellercloud’s WMS, to improve the efficiency of its warehouse and shipping operations. Stewart enjoys Shipbridge’s practicality, noting that you can add dimensions and weight information at the SKU level, so you don’t have to input that information every time you ship an order. On top of that, Shipbridge also helps Palatize generate shipping rates based on their carriers.

After Sellercloud

A year after starting with Sellercloud, Palatize has seen some significant changes. “The ability to adapt the system with our needs, and that’s really been very helpful to us and our growth,” Stewart summarized. Sellercloud helped Palatize grow the merchant fulfilled side of its business, enabling it to expand to new marketplaces with exceptional growth on Walmart and eBay. “We’ve really seen a lot of growth in terms of merchant fulfilled products,” said Stewart.

In fact, Palatize experienced so much growth with Sellercloud that they built their own warehouse. “The warehouse will be 25,000 square foot on the ground, and we’re moving out of a 6,000 square foot [warehouse] right now,” said Stewart. He adds that they expect to leverage Sellercloud and Skustack to the fullest in the new warehouse, highlighting the effectiveness of the combination in managing inventory, tracking POs and expiration dates, and the order fulfillment process.

Stewart highly recommends Sellercloud. “I would say that Sellercloud is definitely a tool that you should utilize sooner than later,” he said, emphasizing that its pricing depends on your order volume. “It’s not like you come in and you’re spending a whole lot of money.”

In the long term, Palatize aims to expand to multiple warehouses across different regions, and Stewart is confident that Sellercloud will help the company accomplish this goal. “I really believe that Sellercloud would be able to manage the inventory across multiple warehouses,” he shared, allowing Palatize to become a national supplier rather than an FBA or merchant fulfilled company.