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10 years ago a diverse team of scientists, psychologists, coaches, and everyday adventurers, recognized the sheer potential of smartfoods and biohacking. Consequently, the company Primal State was born. The vision was clear – building Germany’s leading biohacking platform for holistic health and wellbeing by offering habit-building product experiences for more energy and balance in daily life.
Primal State – Biohacking made easy
Biohacking is the idea to hack your own biology – sounds interesting, right? In fact, it is – with its holistic approach of combining social and nutritional goals with fitness and the mind, Primal state tackles widespread diseases like fatigue, stress, and obesity.
To reach that goal, they have developed a sophisticated system. The business model is straightforward – Primal State offers a big amount of high-quality content for free, and additionally sells products that support and facilitate customers to reach their goals of living a healthier life.
*15.000 people go through their digital video courses every year and 200.000 people per month read their articles, recipes, and guides. Additionally, all products and programs are developed with a team of Ph.D. level scientists leading to a customer base of 150.000 customers.*all numbers from 2021
Smartfoods – not as smart logistics
Let’s go back to the year 2019. Primal State successfully operates as a main player in Germany and customers love their 100% natural, sugar-free, and gluten-free products. In other words, life could be easy.
However, logistics and order fulfillment are big pain points for the fast-growing company. They experience unpleasant surprises with their fulfillment providers. These problems range from damaged products to even lost stock. Everybody can imagine that making sales that cannot be fulfilled because the products are no longer at the warehouse, must be one of the most frustrating scenarios for any entrepreneur.
Additionally, transparency of invoices and pricing was not given and the logistics cost amounted to between 30% and 40% of the revenue – too much for Primal State.
Hassle-free e-Commerce fulfillment with byrd: Finding and building chemistry with the best fitting 3PL
After trying out 3 other fulfillment companies, Primal State finally learned about the fulfillment company byrd and has never looked back. Both companies can benefit from byrd’s experience in the field of fulfillment of vitamins and supplements.
In a webinar from the 5th of October, 2021 Nicolas Martin, CEO at Primal State, said that he particularly appreciates three things when working with byrd:
- High focus on the process and software
- Fair prices
- Excellent service level
He concluded:
With byrd we have found a fulfillment partner that leverages technology to provide an excellent service level.
He also gave three tips for finding the right fulfillment provider
- Calculate costs for a sample order
- Know your contribution margin (CM1, CM2, CM3)
- If you have less than 100 shipments per month, you should start in-house
To sum this up he said you first have to know:
How much can I pay for fulfillment.
Webinar Q&A with Primal State
At the end of the webinar, attendees could ask additional questions and Nicolas Martin was happy to answer all of them.
One of the topics discussed was how they go about increasing sales during peak-season and subsequently how they handle the immense growth of volume during Q4. In that time period in 2020, for example, Primal State doubled its number of orders fulfilled.
Nicolas gave an interesting insight that on Black Friday alone, they doubled their monthly revenue. The key to increasing sales and differentiating from competitors is to have a smart marketing strategy. He suggests creating offers and letting potential customers know at least two weeks before Black Friday.
The second important tip was to always make sure to have enough stock. Finding the right amount of stock to always be able to fulfill orders and, at the same time, have a positive cashflow can be challenging for non-investor-backed e-commerce companies. Check out last week’s webinar to dive into attractive solutions for inventory financing. As an alternative, Nicolas mentioned offering presales or longer delivery times as customers usually are more understanding when they get sales offers during the peak-season.
Nicolas also mentioned that it is important to let your logistics partner know in advance when to expect increased shipping volumes. This is true as these companies have to plan their workforce accordingly. Due to the pandemic topics like getting enough packaging material quickly has become more complicated too.
Talking about the pandemic, Nicolas, on the one hand, saw advantages for his business. People became more aware of their health and sales increased. On the other hand, however, prices for raw materials, packaging, paper, and the like got more expensive.
Check out the video of the webinar for more information on how Primal State projects sales volumes, how they decide on where to expand to next and to learn more about their multi-channel strategy.
