Name: How co-warehousing empowers your business to grow faster
Uploaded: 2025-02-11T17:41:04.625Z
Duration: 30 min 12 s
Description: How co-warehousing empowers your business to grow faster

Transcript for "How co-warehousing empowers your business to grow faster": Hello? Hello. How's it going? It's going. Happy to be here. Welcome to the webinar, everyone. My name is Olivia Mariani. I am VP of marketing here at Saltbox, and I'm gonna kick us off. This first session is all about how co warehousing can empower you to grow your business faster. We have some great tips in here for you. It's gonna be a quick and dirty overview, and let's get into it. Also, some quick housekeeping. So first of all, just so we can make sure everyone can hear us and also we wanna know where you're dialing in from, Please drop your company name in the chat and where you're joining us from. And while you do that, I'm going to talk through just a couple housekeeping items. Number one, all sessions will be recorded and the slides shared out after. And if you have any audio issues, please just mention it in the chat, and we'll try to get you some help. So getting right into it. Here's our agenda for today. We're gonna talk to, why co warehousing exists, what is co warehousing, the advantages and benefits, and we're also going to give you a couple real world examples from how some Saltbox members are using our spaces. And then we'll end with some q and a. And quickly to introduce your team today, who's on the call. So we have Monica. She is, a veteran in the industry, the logistics industry. She is at Shopify and a company called Deliver. She has lots of experience in logistics space and working with brands just like yours and also, of course, a ton of marketing knowledge. She does all our content here at Saltbox. And myself, I, like I said, am VP of marketing here. I work a lot with brands here at Saltbox, and my background actually is in software as a service. And there are a lot of parallels between growth marketing in that business and ecommerce. So I have a lot of knowledge to share around customer acquisition and recurring revenue and all of those good things. So let's jump right in. Thanks, Olivia. Thanks for the intro. Yeah. So we're really excited to talk to you today about co warehousing. So a lot of you, I'm sure, are familiar with traditional warehousing models. So whether it's a three p l, you own your own warehouse, or maybe you run your business from your home garage or even your living room. We've kind of heard it all. So we really wanna tell you today about another concept that you have access to, which is called co warehousing. So really wanna showcase, why co warehousing was born, and a lot of that is because, you know, number one, ecommerce is more popular than ever today. We have a stat here on the screen that says sorry. One second. 5,500,000 new business applications were filed in 2023 alone. And so the ecommerce industry is booming. There's more businesses entering the industry than ever. And then also traditional warehousing models are just inflexible. So whether that's, you know, you have record high rent or large space requirements that are kind of squeezing you out of those traditional models, there are additional options that you have with co warehousing that can kind of change the game for your business. So before we dive into what co warehousing is, I really wanna understand, how everyone is running their operations today. So like I mentioned, maybe you're running it from your house, maybe you have your own warehouse, maybe you have your products in a three p l. So, just drop a comment in the chat. I would love to see where everyone stands. And then moving along, so what co warehousing is. So now that we understand why it exists, we'll dive into a little bit of what that co warehousing model is. So what we're seeing and what we're hearing from a lot of our members today is that co warehousing is if we work and a warehouse had a baby. That's the best way we can describe it. We actually laugh with our CEO about this because he kind of hates this statement, but it's true. And, you know, we're seeing that 2,000,000 square feet is the total estimated co warehousing footprint today. So this is a growing industry. This is something that a lot of businesses are now doing. They're moving away from the more traditional models because of the benefits that co warehousing provides. So what it is, you get private space and a shared warehousing facility. You have your own suite, so you aren't sharing shelves with, other businesses like you would in a three p l. And you're also running your operations directly from your suite. So you can pick, pack, ship. We have kitchens. We have conference rooms. We have content studios. Everything you can imagine is in one place to help you run your business, more efficiently. And then, also, it's more than just a space. Right? We have a community of entrepreneurs like yourself. We have, ecommerce businesses. We have artists. We have all kinds of floral shops and, you know, event businesses that work out of our spaces. So it's truly for everyone, and it's not just if you're shipping ecommerce products. But the best part is that you're getting an access to this community. So you can talk with other people, in the industry. You can get real life insights from what's worked for them, what hasn't. You know, just really building a community for yourself and, the other people around you is something that's really important about the co warehousing model. And then moving into the benefits of co warehousing. So you have that scalable space, you get to customize your suite, and you get on demand services. Those are all gonna fall under flexibility, really taking the ownership of your brand and putting it back into your own hands. So at a traditional three PL or a modern wear or, sorry, a traditional warehouse, you aren't on-site. You aren't seeing who's handling your products day in and day out. You aren't really understanding how they're being picked, how they're being packed. You don't have that insight. But here at a Coeras and facility like Saltbox, you get that flexibility. You get to customize your space, and you get to have that visibility. With visibility, you also get real time tracking. So you're seeing your inventory come in. You're seeing it go out. You're seeing the entire operations from start to finish as well as that in person access. So if you wanna come in and do inventory counts or, you know, you need to just understand, how much of a unit you have in a certain product because you have a sale coming up. You can do that. You just come in each day, and you're working directly from the space where your inventory is. And then lastly, cost effectiveness. You have those shared resources like I mentioned. So you have content studios, conference studios, or conference rooms. You have shared materials. You have pallet jacks. You have a loading dock. All of those things that you wouldn't have access to, in your own setup or at a more traditional space, you get that here at Saltbox and, co warehousing facilities. Also, you get discounted shipping rates. Olivia will talk a little bit more about that coming up, in a couple slides. And then no long term leases. You know, we have monthly memberships. We have six months memberships, and we have twelve month membership. So you really get to choose what works for you, and you're not locked into long term contracts that, you know, no one likes that. No one wants to be stuck somewhere that isn't working for them. We really like to give that flexibility, and that cost balance to our customers. And then next, we have a little, chart here that is gonna show you a traditional model versus co warehousing. So like we mentioned, we have that custom workspace, hands on, on-site support. We have a team that actually will come in and pick and pack your orders for you if you don't have your time to do it, as well as you get that access to your inventory. You can train staff on your products and your processes, and then also the content studios, flex storage, office, and coworking space. So you get all of that with co warehousing. You get none of that with a traditional model. And then also some of those other services like, you know, storage fees you're waiving. Well, you get consistent monthly storage fees if that's something you need. Whereas with a traditional model, you're getting a variable price with peak surcharges. So, typically, a three p l or a traditional model will raise the price of your storage rent, when those busy seasons come, like the holidays, Black Friday, all that because they know they can get more money out of you. And then lastly, access to new and emerging carriers. So you don't have to ship with USPS. You don't have to ship with UPS. You can if you want to, but you get better prices by going through a co warehousing model. So we have rates and we have agreements with these carriers that give you a discounted price, and you get access to that within the parcel platform. Like I said, Olivia will talk more on that later. But you can kind of go through and see and compare prices for shipping Thanks, Monica. So, just Thanks, Monica. So, just to get literal for a second, we do often get asked, what is a saltbox? And it you know, the whole what's in a name conversation sparks a lot of questions. So at the literal sense, the saltbox is it's a type of home in New England. And, actually, as you can see by the photo, it has, like, a pitched roof that slopes down in the back and the asymmetry of the unequal sides. Those are the most distinctive features, and a lot of our buildings actually look this way. Of note, a lot of Saltbox dwellers were small businesses. They worked in what we call a lean to workshop up in, like, the rafters of the home. And so there is actually a lot of meaning behind why our company is called Saltbox because a lot of these businesses, just like, back in the nineteenth century, they're working out of their home today. And we wanna create that feeling, that community feel for them when they do end up moving out of their garage or out of their home and into a space. But, really, what do we do? What do we provide? We help businesses and entrepreneurs simply put, oh, Monica. She dropped off and she's driving the slides. Hello? I'm still here. Oh, I don't see your photo. Okay. Well, yeah, next slide if you're on. Okay. Sorry. Yeah. So we help commerce ecommerce businesses and entrepreneurs get shipped on. You've probably seen that as with that play on words. And what we really mean by that is, you know, if you're a logistics enabled business, meaning shipping product, having access to loading docks, like, all the really hard parts of running a business, Saltbox is for you, and we can help you get it done. Getting a little bit more into that, though, like, who is in the salt boxes across America? Who are the businesses that make up our spaces? Like I said, it's logistics enabled companies. Monica mentioned a couple. A lot of these businesses are ecommerce companies that are small and growing and starting to really feel the pain of the logistics side of the business. You know, you worked really hard to drive new customer acquisition, to get your Shopify store up, and you're starting to see the that revenue come in. But being able to ship the product out on time and in line with consumer expectations, it can become a real hassle, and it also can get really expensive and laborious laborious. So, whether you're just getting started or you need, more of a scale advantage, Saltbox is definitely a place for you between our space, our services, and our shipping platform. So let's talk about the amenities. What is included with a Saltbox membership? Well, you get all of these things you hear see here on the slide. You get loading docks, receiving services, shipping technology. So the app is called Parcel. You get access to this by being able to tap into our economies of scale, that shared economy that Monica was talking about. That allows us to be able to get into these emerging carriers, which typically are only reserved for the largest, enterprise level shippers. But at scale, with all of the businesses that make up Saltbox, the businesses who use Parcel and decide to ship through those emerging carriers can save an average of $4 per shipment. So it's it's a real impact on your bottom line, and members love that perk. But like she said, you can also utilize USPS, FedEx, UPS. All of those drop offs and pick offs are happening. But if you ever tour a salt box, you'll see the loading dock is where all the action is. It also includes carrier pickups, of course, fast Wi Fi. We also have the option if you want to tap into us for fulfillment, whether that's all the time and you don't wanna be on-site or you just wanna have a team member on-site and have the rest outsourced to Saltbox, we can absolutely do that. But, also, a lot of our clients like to use Pick n Pack during their peak seasons when, they don't need it all the time. It's kinda something that they wanna turn on and off with seasonality. That's another advantage of Saltbox versus a traditional three PL. We also have a lot of professional equipment that you're going to need if you're shipping any product, pallet jacks, all of the, like, boxes, anything you could ever need to get that product picked, packed, and shipped. And we have conference rooms, which is really great for teams that, are remote or wanna utilize the conference rooms at the warehouse but don't need a full time office. And then our content studio is a real favorite. You can shoot product there. People get very creative with this. If you ever come on-site, we can show you kind of how different brands are using it, but it's complimentary as part of your membership. And next slide. We're gonna now talk about some real life examples, so stories of how members are using Saltbox, and I'll pass it over to Monica. Thanks. Yeah. So part of my role here at Saltbox is to really talk to our members and understand how the space has helped them transform their business. So how has it made it better than what they were doing before? One of those great examples is this man named Ken Robison from Hello Garage. And Hello Garage is interesting because they're not a typical ecommerce brand. What they do is they have, like, epoxy flooring. They have shelving units that they set up in people's garages, and, you know, it's really a full service company. And so what Ken really needed was a space to store his products. And, typically, you know, a lot of the customers we do see are ecommerce, so they're shipping products in and out to customers. Whereas Ken here, he's more so using it as a space to come and get the products he needs for a job, you know, inbound large large inventory, like pallets of heavy doors, pallets of heavy shelving, and then having a place to come pick up those items that are close to where he's conducting the jobs, at people's homes. So he needed somewhere that he could seamlessly receive these products, somewhere that was comfortable. He is in Texas, and we all know it's really hot in Texas in the summer. Where he was working before was out of a storage unit, which not ideal in the heat. And, also, another thing was that his, his warehouse owner at the storage unit was also using his space to store his own stuff. So it was like a housing, like, storing furniture for his house, storing just personal things in there, and that wasn't ideal for Ken. So during the pandemic when his business was kicking off, he really needed somewhere else to go. He found Saltbox, and it completely changed his business. So instead of, you know, getting pallets at the storage unit, he could now ship them directly to Saltbox and then store them and come get exactly what he needs when he needs it. And I love this quote. He said, having someone accept shipments at our Saltbox warehouse allows us to focus more on growing the business instead of waiting around for packages and freight to arrive. So this is a real testament to time saving, space saving, and overall just giving Ken and the Hello Garage business, a way to grow that wasn't going to impact their bottom line. And then next, we have Shinery, which I'm sure some of you have heard of this brand. They were on Good Morning America. They sell in a lot of boutiques around America, and they're actually using Parcel, which is, our technology partner for shipping. And with Parcel, they were able to save a dollar 33 to $3.14 per shipment, which is huge. Not only price savings, they were able to see some time savings as well. So they, would take many, many hours to batch process all of their orders. And using technology within the parcel platform, they were able to save three hours of manual work of having to do that. And then lastly, they, save time on delivery tracking resolution. So six hours saved there as well. You know, it's it's obviously scary when you're switching how you ship. So if you were using another platform, you know, you might be worried that it's gonna be a huge lift to move everything into a new platform. But Bree here from Shinery really, you know, has this testament to how Saltbox has helped them understand how to ship better and how the landscape actually works and the levers that she could pull to reduce costs and increase efficiencies once she was within that platform. So there's a little bit of upfront setting up, but our team makes it really easy, and then you start to see results almost immediately using the tool. So definitely worth the setup, as Brie mentioned here. And then lastly, we have a collaboration, which actually is really interesting. So like we said at Saltbox, community is a big thing. So you're constantly able to meet people from other businesses, share your story, learn from one another, and this is a great example of that. So I actually got to meet these entrepreneurs in person, at our Seattle location, Adam and Estelle. So Adam owns Full Olive, which is a olive oil company. They also have some, like, crackers and imports from Argentina to do charcuterie boards and things like that. And then Estelle owns Flour and Olive, which is a olive oil cake baking company. So she makes a bunch of cake mixes that you use, with olive oil instead of milk or other ingredients that aren't as healthy for you. So I love the title of this. A chance meeting turns into a likely with unscratched out collaboration for two CPG brands. So they met in just the middle of Saltbox one day. I think Estelle made a cake, and she put it in Slack saying, hey. I made this cake from my business, like, using ingredients that we have for sale. Come try it. Let me know what you think. And then Adam saw the Slack message and was like, wait. This is crazy. Use olive oil. I make olive oil. We should collaborate, and the rest is history from there. So the two collaborated on an exclusive box, for their customers, and they both sold it on their online web stores and at farmers markets across Seattle. And in doing so, they were, able to by working with Softbox, they were able to increase their operational efficiency, so 30% increase there. They also reduced their pick impact times by 20%. But the real the real, reward here was that they got to expand into a new product line by collaborating, which is, as we like to say, priceless. So Saltbox provided us not only with the space we needed, but also with a community that sparked an incredible collaboration. So this is just another note to working in a co warehousing facility. You're getting those, relationship building opportunities. You're getting to meet people. You're not just another face in a big warehouse that your products are just stacked on a shelf. And now I'll switch it over to Olivia to talk about why now is the time to make the big switch. Thanks, Monica. And I love that last story. I think, I just wanted to add, like, we've recently been meeting with members across all locations, and this community aspect is one of the biggest things that just keeps coming up as a theme. And so I think, you're gonna hear a lot more from us on that this year, offering different events at the the Saltbox locations. And even if you're not a workspace member, I think that is, like, truly one of the biggest value adds of Saltbox is just people miss that in person connection, and it really, is truly fostered both organically but also through Saltbox facilitating. And I just I love that piece. Whenever you enter a Saltbox, it's like you feel the energy buzzing. Yeah. So why should you think about switching now? Well, as we talked about, ecommerce is continuing to explode. It's making such a huge portion up of the economy. So many brands are starting businesses online, and, sales are expected to reach 7,400,000,000,000.0 this year. And as a brand participating in today's economy where social media is king, As you know, you could be one viral post away from having a really, really successful boost in orders. But if you are not prepared to handle that demand, I know that sounds like a good problem to have, but we've heard it many times. That kind of demand can actually really ruin a brand's, ascent if they then don't have a good experience after the sale is completed. People talk. People expect top notch customer service. And even if you can't give two day prime shipping, they definitely want really great communication and really good customer service. So being able to be prepared for that on the logistics side is worth every penny. Even if you feel like you're not quite there yet where the volume justifies moving out of your garage, we've seen a lot of companies decide, like, we need to do this because we're starting to get glimmers of being unable to handle this order volume. I hope everyone has that happen to them, but just be prepared on the logistics side. And then maintaining your brand rep. So as your brand's growing, you wanna continue the halo effect of getting those new customers. You want those customers to repeat order. You want them to write positive reviews and tell their friends about your brand and share. So, unfortunately, no matter how beautiful your website is, no matter how great your product is, if that customer experience is lacking, that's gonna hurt your brand rep, and we don't wanna see that. Time for some q and a. This is the best part. I've seen a couple of questions come in already. Mhmm. I can start I can go through a couple of these that I'm seeing. That sounds good. Yeah. And then if you guys have any questions, outside of what's already come in while we're going through what we already have, just feel free to drop them in the chat on the right hand side, and we will try to answer them back in the chat as soon as possible. Yes. Please put all your questions in. Okay. So a couple that came in while we were presenting. Someone's asking if they have to be on-site. What if I wanted the Saltbox team to take over the fulfillment? Yes. Absolutely. That is an option, and a lot of our clients use us in that way. Monica did say, like, a big value of Saltbox is being able to see the product, and so that is a reason a lot of clients come to Saltbox. However, plenty of them are coming from three p l's or just wanna be completely hands off. And so you just have to make sure you have a dedicated space at Saltbox, one of our warehouse suites, and you can outsource the actual picking and packing of orders and the shipping to Saltbox's team. And we can share more about that if you're interested. And then someone's asking they're saying, I have over 200 palettes at any given time. Can SaltBox accommodate this kind of value this kind of volume? Congratulations. That's incredible. And, yes, we absolutely can. We have, yes, we have small businesses, but we also have scaling businesses who have many SKUs and lots of product. We have suites ranging from, like, extra small. I think, Monica, is it, like, how many square feet is the extra small? Like It's, I think, maybe 60 to a hundred. It varies per location just depending on the space they have available. But, yeah, I would say anywhere from 60 to a hundred. Yes. That's a really good point, though. Like, depending on availability, we do have, like, different, layouts at each location, but we certainly have lots of scaled brands that are doing that kind of volume, and we'd love to work with you. Awesome. So we'll, answer the rest of the q and a directly in the chat so you can have a written answer to look back on. But we really just wanna end today with, are you ready to get shipped done? That's what we say here at Saltbox. We love to help brands get shipped done. We're here to support brands like Olivia said of all sizes. And, yeah, we would love to show you our space. If you visit saltbox.com slash book a tour, you'll see it on the screen here. You can book a tour at one of our 11 locations across nine cities, and we hope to see you there. And I'll also put my email in the chat, in case anyone has any detailed follow-up questions, but definitely book a tour if you're interested in getting started. Thanks again for joining. Thanks, Monica. Thanks, guys. Take care. Bye.