Case studies

How Palouse Brand Built a Fully Sustainable Supply Chain

August 22, 2022
5 min read
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Learn how Palouse Brand built a sustainable supply chain that still wow-ed their customers with fast shipping across all of their sales channels.

Rooted in Sustainability

Palouse Brand is a family-owned farm operating in rural Washington state. Their commitment to sustainability begins at the field level – with direct seeding and No Till practices – and extends all the way through their packaging and labor practices.

CEO, Sara Mader, brought her extensive background in technology and human resources to her husband’s family of fifth-generation farmers and decided to take Palouse Brand, historically an export-only business, into the US consumer market. They launched sales on Amazon, their ecommerce website, and Walmart Marketplace.  

Palouse Brand quickly saw that consumers were hungry for sustainable, protein-rich foods like their lentils, beans, and whole grains. So hungry, in fact, that their hybrid fulfillment model, which split orders between Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA) and their own in-house facility, would sometimes be overwhelmed by high demand. They would often have to shut down sales channels just to keep up with order volume. 

They soon realized that to meet the growing consumer demand for their products, they needed an outsourced fulfillment partner to scale up their operations quickly.

A Blossoming Partnership

When Palouse Brand set out to find a fulfillment partner, they were looking for three solutions:

  • A Seller Fulfilled Prime (SFP) network that would allow them to be more connected to their Amazon customers and have greater inventory control.
  • A multi-channel platform that could fulfill orders across all of their channels.
  • A sustainable solution that upheld their commitment to environmental health all the way through the final mile.

When CEO Sara Mader was introduced to Ware2Go, she knew she had found a partner that could take Palouse Brand’s product to an even broader market.

A Fast Follow

Ware2Go worked quickly to integrate with Palouse Brand’s sales channels and inbound their products into 5 warehouses across their network. In two short weeks, Ware2Go was fulfilling and shipping orders across all of their sales channels.

By streamlining all of their fulfillment through Ware2Go, Palouse Brand was able to fulfill all of their Amazon orders through Seller Fulfilled Prime (SFP), giving them more control over their Amazon sales. They could also offer the same free 2-day delivery promise shoppers have come to expect from Amazon through Palousebrand.com.

They were also able to deliver on their commitment to sustainability all the way to their shoppers’ doorsteps in two distinct ways.

  1. By distributing their inventory across 5 warehouses, they stocked inventory as close as possible to their end customers, lowering their time in transit (TNT) on final mile deliveries and in turn, decreasing their carbon footprint.
  2. Ware2Go’s Carbon Offset Shipping Network offsets all carbon emissions on shipments within their network, from freight to small parcel.

An End to End Solution

In Ware2Go, Palouse Brand had found more than a fulfillment partner – they had found an end-to-end supply chain solution. Through a partnership with Coyote, Ware2Go offers competitive freight rates from a trusted and expansive freight network.

Together, Coyote and Ware2Go simplified the inbound process to give Palouse Brand a low-touch solution that worked more efficiently than ever.

According to Sara Mader, products can be picked up from her facility in Washington state, transported to a Ware2Go facility, processed, and ready to sell in as little as 72 hours.

Faster inbounds mean faster time to revenue and a decreased risk of stockouts, which is key to keeping their Amazon account and their margins healthy.

An Expanding Market

Sara Mader sees a world of opportunity for Palouse Brand with a scalable fulfillment solution in place. Palouse Brand will continue to serve their customers through Amazon, Walmart, and Palousebrand.com and plans to expand into additional sales channels, from ecommerce marketplaces to brick and mortar retail.

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