Housebreaking Pads Retailer Uses Shipwire Storage and Shipping Services to Jettison Warehouse, Grow Profitably by Helping Harried Dog Owners

SUNNYVALE, Calif. & LOS ANGELES (Business Wire EON) November 27, 2007 -- Shipwire, Inc., a Demo 2007 success and the leader in Internet-delivered storage and shipping services, today announced that Doggypads.com has successfully deployed Shipwire to eliminate the hassles of warehousing and order fulfillment. By switching to Shipwire, Doggypads.com has been able to jettison a 3,000 square foot warehouse, expand sales to meet desperate dog owners’ demands, and focus on launching new products.

set-up fees, fees to receive palletized or un-palletized shipments, and fees for shipping labels.

Doggypads.com is run by retailer Mark Stern. Like other smart online entrepreneurs, Mark focuses his retail business on a high demand, niche product: potty training for puppies and adult dogs. By delivering doggy housebreaking pads at wholesale prices, he has enjoyed explosive sales growth.

What Mark didn’t enjoy was the mess that came with success, particularly the hassles of storage, inventory and shipping. The biggest mess was the 3,000 square foot warehouse he had leased to meet the strong demand for his product. Managing and monitoring the warehouse, along with inventory and shipping, took a huge amount of time and effort—time that would be better spent on growing the business.

Traditional Warehouse Structure “Would Have Killed Our Business”

In order to grow, Mark needed to expand his storage space even further. However, the added costs would threaten his profit margins because he couldn’t raise his low wholesale prices—Mark’s big competitive advantage. Large companies play the expansion game all the time. Build out storage and inventory, and eat the added costs until business catches up. As a small business, Mark knew he didn’t want to play that game, but felt he had no choice.

While searching for more warehouse space, Mark encountered a problem many small businesses face. Warehouses didn’t return his calls, and those who did were not upfront with him. The more Mark dug into the details, the more “buried” costs he found, including he says, “set-up fees, fees to receive palletized or un-palletized shipments, and fees for shipping labels.” Fee after fee added up.

All these buried costs “would have killed our business,” says Mark. In short, his business was trapped at its current size, and the traditional expansion model would not work.

Shipwire Cuts Warehouse Complexity that Curbed Growth

“I knew I needed to find a way that was entirely different,” Mark explains. “That was why I was so stunned when I found Shipwire on the Internet. Shipwire offers an outsourced, automated, plug-and-play storage and shipping solution made for growing businesses like mine. With Shipwire, I wouldn’t even need to play the expanding warehouse game.”

Shipwire’s upfront pricing makes things clean, simple and transparent. There are no buried costs, no set-up fees, and no long-term contracts. Plans start at $29.95 a month for multiple warehouses and provide an easy path to scale up as Mark’s business grows. And Shipwire’s point-and-click CRE Loaded Web store integration makes it simple to automate order shipping once a customer orders from doggypads.com. It was exactly what Mark instinctively knew his business needed.

“I called Shipwire several times to confirm what I was reading on the Web site,” Mark recalls. “It just seemed too good to be true.”

Shipwire enabled Mark to streamline his business and focus on growth, and he says, “The lynchpin was that there were no start-up costs, and Shipwire was very up-front with pricing. It made me feel comfortable that we could scale our business. When I started using Shipwire, I eliminated a lot of headaches and growing pains of having a 3,000 square foot warehouse—including management, payroll, taxes, security, insurance, and other monitoring that went with it.”

Maybe best of all, Shipwire enabled Mark to do away with all the stress and hassle that he’d experienced with his warehouse and order shipping.

“I didn’t get into this business to add more stress and hours to my work day,” Mark says, “I wanted a business that was enjoyable and easy to manage. Now I have it.”

Since removing the stress and hassle of shipping and storage, Mark has been able to enjoy more time at his new ski chalet, where friends along with their (potty-trained) dogs are welcome.

Doggypads.com is America’s fastest growing pet under-pad direct supplies company. The business delivers doggy wee pads direct to consumers, veterinarians, groomers, and breeders, all at wholesale prices. Visit http://www.Doggypads.com to housebreak puppies the easy way with Doggypads.

Chain Reaction Ecommerce (CRE) provides the popular open-source shopping cart CRE Loaded, a complete online store/shopping cart application. CRE can be contacted at 1-800-609-2141 or http://www.creloaded.com.

Shipwire, Inc. allows Web retailers to focus on growth by eliminating the hassle of storage and shipping. Plans start at just $29.95 a month. Shipwire is changing the game for businesses that sell merchandise online – offering a growing warehouse network, simple bundled pricing, a developer network, and Web store integration. Today, more than 30,000 online stores have Shipwire built-in. Shipwire has warehouses located strategically in Los Angeles, Chicago and Toronto. Shipwire can be contacted at 1-888-SHIPWIRE or http://www.Shipwire.com.

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