The challenge
Scaling operations to support an omnichannel strategy
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. With more retail options than ever before—including brand websites, ecommerce platforms, and social media stores—brands looking to fuel growth will need to be flexible and responsive to rapidly changing shopper habits.
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 help JLab grow internationally.
- Deliver customers’ orders fast and on time. The JLab team was used to the exceptional fulfilment 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 quickly and customers might not get their orders.”
The solution
An agile 3PL with a global presence that can support growth
Because JLab already had inventory in Amazon fulfilment centers for its Amazon.com business, the team saw the potential and decided to leverage Amazon Multi-Channel Fulfilment, the Amazon 3PL service, to fulfill orders across its other channels—and eventually other regions. MCF pulls JLab’s orders from a single pool of strategically distributed inventory, which helped simplify the onboarding and scaling process. Andrew says, “It’s been easy to just turn it on for any marketplace or channel.”
JLab uses MCF to fulfill website orders, 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.”
JLab’s growing relationship with the Amazon’s logistics network helps them stay ahead of demand, and keep up with customers’ rising expectations. In the US, JLab uses Buy with Prime, which offers Amazon Prime members shopping benefits on its website, including fast, free shipping and easy returns.
The results
Increased speed, conversions, and order value across channels
In addition to simplified inventory management and fulfilment operations, MCF has helped JLab scale globally 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 customers in the way that the team hoped when they decided to invest more in the company’s website and broader DTC strategy.
The global implementation of MCF has led to impressive results across multiple fronts, including:
- Fulfilment 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 in the US 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.”
- Scaling with ease into new regions: By leveraging Amazon’s global fulfilment network, JLabs is now able to reach more customers globally than ever before—and guarantee fast, reliable delivery when they do.
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.