How CANVAS Style Builds Trust and Loyalty with Customers Using Fulfil

Overview

CANVAS Style is a wholesale and Direct-to-Consumer (DTC) fashion brand based out of San Antonio, Texas, founded and led by husband and wife duo Michelle and Davin Shaw.

The CANVAS Style story started out in 2005, when the Shaws decided to convert a room above their garage into a workspace to build out their business dreams. They started humbly, spending their evenings and weekends creating jewelry samples to sell via private label and wholesale. Two years later, their dream had become a full-time reality. Both Michelle and Davin were in a position to quit their day jobs, hire their first employee, and they moved into their very own 2,000 sqft office space.

Over the next 9 years, the Shaws continued to grow their wholesale business, quickly outgrowing their 2,000 sqft office space and adding their own warehousing facility. In 2016, they officially launched their business under the CANVAS Style brand at the Atlanta Gift Show. Within their first month of operating, CANVAS Style saw over $1 million dollars in sales. Within a year, they had shipped their first order to Nordstrom as well as opened up a showroom location in Manhattan.

At the heart of CANVAS Style has always been the goal to empower women to feel more confident, and put-together.

“We believe women should be able to treat themselves with quality accessories that bring smiles to their faces without feeling guilty about their purchases. That’s why creating high-quality, easy to pair & wear pieces at a guilt-free price is at the core of everything we do at CANVAS Style.”
- Michelle Shaw, Founder and CEO

By 2018, it was time to evolve the business once again. To further live out their mission, CANVAS Style introduced a DTC channel in 2018, driving more growth for the brand and the eventual move in 2019 into their current 12,500 sqft office and warehouse.

Challenge

Managing both a wholesale and DTC business didn’t come without its challenges. Shortly after launching the CANVAS Style brand, the team invested in a toolbox to help streamline their operations, regardless of what sales channel they were selling on. They implemented a tech stack through Netsuite, which helped them manage their inventory and operations. The Netsuite implementation also included several add-ons such as Descartes; which allowed them to fully run their warehouse operations, and Celigo; to manage other integrations, such as Shopify.

Unfortunately, it didn’t take long before CANVAS Style outgrew this existing setup. Warehouse staff would be without access to their order management service sometimes for an entire day, making it impossible to manage and fulfill incoming orders. Manual processes for data entry, and several support issues were starting to hold up production and their ability to get orders to customers in a timely manner.

In order to have their current system continue to meet their needs, significant and costly customizations were also going to be required, pushing the team at CANVAS Style to search for replacements.

The Solution

The replacement had to happen relatively quickly, with an expensive and time-intensive contract renewal on the horizon. CANVAS Style underwent an extensive due diligence process to explore alternative solutions but were consistently disappointed by the long estimates being proposed to migrate their existing solution from Netsuite to another vendor.

Thankfully, they came across Fulfil. They were particularly impressed with the holistic solution Fulfil could offer. Its powerful capabilities would streamline operations, without sacrificing the ability to run an agile, quick implementation timeline.

“We interviewed a lot of other softwares and Fulfil’s was really the only one that fit what we were looking for. Many of the other vendors quoted us a year to migrate over from Netsuite - they were really long migration periods - whereas with Fulfil, we were able to get onboard from start to finish within 2 months. That really impressed us.”
- Michelle Shaw, President

The Fulfil system allowed CANVAS Style to continue to keep their operations running under short order, while also offering new capabilities and efficiencies from their previous business-as-usual operations.

Fulfil’s order management module meant that orders could be processed much faster. CANVAS Style’s team of six was now able to operate at an unprecedented level, leaving time for them to focus on other tasks such as inventory cycle counts, which through Fulfil, they were now doing daily. The process to kick off and perform a cycle count was much more efficient, as the team could initiate them within seconds and employees no longer had to manually choose which bins to perform a cycle count on or make small inventory adjustments.

Inventory management also improved as the CANVAS Style team (and their customers!) could now easily see what stock was available. This helped the team accelerate supplier shipments to restock inventory, and also forecast future needs. Rather than having empty or overstocked shelves, CANVAS Style has been able to plan ahead and properly allocate inventory across their various channels.

And of course, this centralized inventory database has prevented customers from experiencing disappointment. When customers do call to ask about their orders, Fulfil allows the CANVAS Style team to easily see an order’s status, track its progress, and provide the customer with the updates they need.

“Fulfil gives us more tools to solve the problem right away, which allows us to build trust with our customers. That’s the priority.”
- Benito Calderon, Warehouse Manager

Warehouse operations saw benefits in the speed of picking and packing orders. Fulfil’s WMS app and warehouse scanners made it easy to know exactly where to grab an item from an order, which product from the bin was needed, and the most efficient path through the warehouse to get there. Not only did this make it faster for the CANVAS Style team to pack orders, but they also noticed fewer errors being made.

The Results

Since using Fulfil, CANVAS Style has seen the following results:

• Faster Shipments: The CANVAS Style team can get products on their website much quicker with a direct connection to Shopify. Warehouse staff spend less time processing orders, and can pick, pack and ship much faster using Fulfil.
  
  
• Reduced Time to Fulfil: Fulfil allowed CANVAS Style to speed up their purchasing process, with filters to search by vendor, description, order dates, and more. Orders also no longer had to be manually entered across each channel, as all eCommerce channels became housed under one roof in Fulfil.
  
  
• Sales Growth: CANVAS Style has been able to easily integrate with, and add on new channels for sales, making inventory management and accessing orders across all channels a breeze. Through the wholesale marketplace Faire alone, they’ve seen 7-figure growth over the last year.
  
  
• Sustainable Headcount: Fulfil has empowered the CANVAS Style team to do more than they thought would be possible with their existing headcount. CANVAS Style estimates they are experiencing approximately a 15% boost to their team’s capacity.
  
  
• Improved Customer Satisfaction: More efficient warehouse operations have allowed the CANVAS Style team to turn orders around faster and get products out to customers in a timely and accurate manner, driving customer satisfaction and loyalty.

Looking Ahead

As the omnichannel discussion marches on in the industry, many DTC brands continue to pursue a wholesale business channel, begin selling through big box stores, and other marketplaces. Since its early days, CANVAS Style has maintained a strong wholesale business line. We asked the team about what trends they anticipated seeing in the near future…

“Each wholesale channel comes with its own unique set of requirements for systems integration,” explained Benito Calderon, Warehouse Manager at CANVAS Style. “Having the flexibility to adapt our system to their needs will be important to make sure we can process each channel’s orders.”

“And that’s where Fulfil comes in, it helps us address these new needs and accomplish those tasks. It feels like Fulfil is part of our family here at CANVAS Style.”
- Benito Calderon, Warehouse Manager

CANVAS Style has also seen significant growth on new marketplaces like Faire. “We hope to see more wholesale marketplace options arise,” Davin Shaw, President at CANVAS Style points out. “The eBays and Walmarts of the world don’t all work for every brand - but channels like wholesale marketplace Faire have been a great opportunity and I imagine we’ll continue to see more of those emerge.”

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