How Hive helps mybacs fulfill flexibly and 40% faster

Looking to improve your gut health? Look no further than German biotechnology startup mybacs. Founded in 2019 by Sebastian Wahl and Carl-Philipp von Polheim, mybacs develops, produces and sells high-quality pre- and probiotics, in addition to other  dietary supplements.

Since then, the company has scaled rapidly, aiming to revolutionize the market around microbiome health, and make a decisive contribution to the daily well-being of their customers. As the company grew, the team realized they needed an operations partner that could offer flexible fulfillment and a hands-on mentality. That’s when they found Hive. 

“We were looking for a 3PL partner that could handle flexible changes to flyers and product bundles, frequent restocking, and that would help us to improve our click-to-door time”, explains Verena, senior operations manager at mybacs.

“One reason why we decided to work with Hive was that they have full control over their processes without anyone in the middle. Since Hive creates the WMS and tests it constantly in Hive-run fulfillment centers, they are always able to implement changes quickly and easily.”

mybacs’ fulfillment time improves by 40%

Within the first few weeks with Hive, mybacs was already able to see a tangible impact on their fulfillment speed. The onboarding process was made simple through the combination of a dedicated onboarding manager and the intuitive interface of the Hive App. Once the first orders were fulfilled by Hive, Verena was immediately able to see a marked difference. 

Faster fulfillment time helps the team at mybacs decrease the time it takes between their customer clicking buy, and the order arriving at their door. “The post purchase time is crucial for customer retention, especially for first time customers, so fulfillment time is extremely important to us”, Verena explains.

“Thanks to Hive’s optimized packaging processes in the fulfillment center, we saw our fulfillment speed increase by 40%.” – Verena. 

Before working with Hive, mybacs worked together with another 3PL where standardized processes and peak times lead to a slower fulfillment speed. Since their cooperation with Hive, optimized processes, especially packaging, has sped up the whole fulfillment process.

More flexible add-ons and 50% cost saving on flyers with every order

Using flyers is a vital part of mybacs’ marketing and customer success strategy. They use them to give customers more information about their products, give them promotional offers, and to collaborate with other brands. All of this helps mybacs with customer retention and increases their customer lifetime value (LTV). Because of this, they need a fulfillment partner that can flexibly handle changes in flyers.

Hive’s fulfillment add-on rules provide the perfect solution. Add-on rules are a series of automations that are created directly in the Hive App. They allow you to add certain extras such as flyers to either all of your orders, or to those with a distinct variable such as a certain SKU, country of origin, basket amount, and more. 

This means that the mybacs team can easily set up rules for certain flyers with certain products, and change them if they have updated information, new supplement bundles, or a new offer they want to tell their customers about.

“With our previous fulfiller we needed to communicate changes in flyer logic via email or phone and it was more expensive”, Verena says. “With Hive’s add-on rules however, we are able to make changes ourselves in the Hive App within seconds. Plus, it costs us half as much per use which is a significant cost saving.” 

All in all, Verena estimates that she saves around €800 per month due to this reduction in price per pick.

Saving 2 hours per month on tedious tasks like restocking announcements

For the mybacs team, restocking had previously been a time consuming process. “We used to have to communicate any restocking via email or phone up our fulfillment partner to ask whether shipments had arrived. This was highly inconvenient and time consuming. Restocking with Hive is much simpler and saves us a great deal of time”, explains Verena. 

With Hive, mybacs can announce restocking themselves within the Hive App and track the arrival. Since the team restocks several times per week, this time adds up to around two hours per month of time saved that was previously taken up with unnecessary phone calls and follow-ups.

Address validation saves mybacs €1000 per month

Another feature the team saves valuable time and money with is address validation. When a mybacs customer inputs their address it is checked by Hive if there is a potential error, the customer is invited to fix it themselves. 

Before implementing address validation, around 20 orders per month were lost due to incorrect addresses, but now, these addresses are flagged before the order is processed. This saves mybacs around €1000 per month on average as well as hours of customer support time.

All operational needs in one place

Verena has been happy to integrate the Hive App into her every day work. “It is great to get everything I need in one place”, she explains. “With our previous fulfiller we were only able to see static data, but now we can now also see dynamic inventory numbers and order processes, which gives me total transparency.”

In addition, the team previously needed an additional tool for analytics, meaning higher costs and increased complexity. With Hive, they now have an integrated analytics suite giving them easy access to the metrics that matter to them directly in the Hive App.

Creating an even more closely integrated future together

With over €1800 and countless hours of valuable time saved per month, the team at mybacs is looking forward to further work with Hive.

They are particularly excited for closer integration of their other tools with Hive. Verena already uses Hive’s Klaviyo integration to let customers know about the status of their orders, and she is excited about the upcoming Gorgias integration to help further cut down on customer support time. 

In addition, mybacs is planning to take their products across Europe using Hive’s European fulfillment network. Having access to multiple fulfillment centers across Europe and the UK will allow mybacs to scale seamlessly across new markets.

“We are so glad to have found an operations partner that is invested in our growth and can help us scale even further.” – Verena.