Energy Muse, the super-hip eCommerce crystal shop, was founded by lifelong friends Heather Askinosie and Timmi Jandro. Within the their 21 years of being in business, they went from selling necklaces out of the trunks of their cars on the streets of Manhattan Beach, CA to consulting with celebrities and shipping thousands of online orders across the country each month. They had been considering switching to a fulfillment center for a while: “[we] felt overwhelmed by the process”, says Timmi. They knew it was time to scale their process and that they needed a fulfillment partner who could meet their specific needs.
“There is no way we would have ever found the fulfillment house that we did, that accommodated our special requests and one that we felt so good about working with. Izba has relationships with hundreds of fulfillment companies and once they understood our company’s needs they under promised and over delivered on finding the perfect fit for us!”
(Timmi, Energy Muse).
Crystal users must often cleanse and charge their crystals to keep them performing optimally. This is often done by putting them in running water, exposing them to sunlight/moonlight, or playing music that covers the stones with vibrations. Because of this, Energy Muse couldn’t partner with just any fulfillment center. They were looking for a team that could handle their orders with care, kit their subscription boxes and play music in the warehouse overnight. Finding the right fulfillment partner can feel intimidating, so Energy Muse’s team used Izba to help them narrow their choices.
Even though the circumstances of this RFP were unique, Izba is no stranger to fulfillment center RFPs. We started by first gathering all of the product requirements, developing a forecast for volume and orders, and then packaged everything into an easy to understand format for the prospective fulfillment centers to digest. While preparing the RFP Izba was also busy screening fulfilment centers to create a short list of candidates. Once those two things were completed Izba managed the RFP communications allowing each of the 3PL providers to determine if they were a good fit while providing detailed cash and margin forecasts back to Energy Muse. While several viable candidates were identified, Energy ultimately ended up selecting WSI to be their fulfillment partner.
