News flash: the slow and steady tortoise no longer wins the race.
The modern shopper’s need for fast delivery has intensified, thanks in large part to the expectations that industry bellwethers like Amazon, Walmart, and Target have helped shape in the past couple of years.
Direct-to-consumer brands and smaller retailers literally have zero chance of protecting (much less growing) their market share without similarly adopting the ways of the speedy hare.
Fortunately, the emergence of instant commerce and micro-fulfillment players like Ohi empowers them to close the gap and even out-compete many leading marketplaces when it comes to e-commerce fulfillment.
How top DTC brands are leveraging instant delivery
Instant delivery is way more than just a ‘nice-to-have’. It’s a must-have upgrade, and it’s very much mandatory if you want to meet your customers’ expectations.
A 2021 global consumer insights survey by PWC revealed “fast/reliable delivery” as consumers’ #1 overall consideration when shopping online.
And businesses who don’t upgrade to at least Amazon-like delivery speed will eventually lose out to Amazon or other big retail companies that are solving for instant commerce.
Happy customers help you grow your brand’s bottom line. According to proprietary Ohi research, the D2C brands that are leveraging instant 2-hour delivery had 24% higher repeat purchase rates compared to same-day delivery and an astounding 61% higher repeat purchase rates when compared to standard UPS/FedEx.
Instant delivery is game-changing for D2C-focused brands, and here are a few success stories that illustrate that very point.
Top DTC Brands Benefiting from Instant Delivery
Olipop’s CLV has grown by 150% with Instant Delivery
Olipop is a leading fizzy tonic brand, the maker of a new kind of soda made from all-natural ingredients, combining the benefits of prebiotics, plant fiber, and botanicals.
Although the brand has a solid omnichannel presence, they believe a direct-to-consumer strategy is crucial to growth.
And for that purpose, the brand needed a D2C/DTC fulfillment partner to meet its high customer experience expectations.
Olipop’s ROI has steadily increased since teaming up with Ohi.
Thanks to the flexible and fast delivery of its sparkling tonics on Ohi’s platform, Olipop now provides its customers with a tremendous post-purchase experience that matches its excellent pre-purchase experience. As a result, many of their customers have repeat subscription orders; with Ohi, Olipop customers can schedule and reschedule deliveries within seven days and in three different time windows.
For Ohi-shipped orders, Olipop experienced a 150% higher customer lifetime value (CLV) and a 140 percent increase in lifetime orders (versus non-Ohi).
The significant increase in repeat purchases highlights the significance of “fast, free, and flexible” delivery for customers and explains why Olipop customers rate Ohi 4.6/5 stars for exceptional service.
Ovira more than doubled its repeat purchase rate
For centuries, women have endured painful periods (dysmenorrhea), pains associated with endometriosis. Ovira is a DTC-focused company devoted to helping women end this pain. Ovira’s revolutionary device, Noha, minimizes pain using pulse therapy.
Because period pain can be spontaneous and unbearable, Ovira wanted a fast delivery of the Noha device.
Ohi seemed like the perfect instant fulfillment partner Ovira sought to meet its customers’ need for convenient and fast delivery.
Having teamed up with Ohi, Ovira now delivers delightfully fast, on-brand, and memorable post-purchase experiences that enable brand growth.
With instant delivery as part of its post-purchase customer experience, Ovira’s repeat purchase rate has more than doubled (+120% for Ohi-shipped orders in comparison to orders shipped via FedEx/UPS). In addition, Ovira’s customers who ordered with Ohi rated us an average rating of 4.7/5 stars.
These numbers clearly emphasize what it means for Ovira’s customers to have instant pain relief products.
Health-Ade’s customer lifetime value topped 40%
To minimize fulfillment costs while providing a great customer experience, one of the country’s most popular kombucha brands sought a better alternative to conventional 3PLs in its major metro areas.
Health-Ade, established in 2012, has quickly developed a nationwide customer base that adores its kombuchas for their delicious taste, an exciting variety of flavors, and countless health benefits.
Kombucha has special handling/transport requirements because it must be refrigerated to maintain peak freshness and probiotic qualities.
Traditional e-commerce fulfillment wasn’t a good fit for Health-Ade: they realized that delivering glass bottles over long distances via UPS/FedEx using a traditional 3PL wouldn’t be viable. First, there’s the risk of breakage. And then there are the ridiculously high costs associated with shipping weight and extra-packaging materials and the need to keep the kombuchas cold, typically necessitating the use of expensive cold packs.
Health-Ade required more efficient handling of e-commerce fulfillment in its most critical metro areas.
Ohi delivered on all that and more.
Ohi enabled instant commerce for Health-Ade allowing them to deliver Kombuchas instantly to their customer base within a week of deployment.
After partnering with Ohi, Health-Ade has seen its customer lifetime value (CLV) increase by 49% on orders shipped with Ohi (versus standard FedEx/UPS), showing just how valuable the instant commerce experience is to customers.
Health-Ade’s customers have rated Ohi an average of 4.6/5 stars for service excellence.
Athletic Brewing Company experienced a 30% increase in their repeat purchase rate
Athletic Brewing, a non-alcoholic craft beer brand, was looking for a faster and more reliable fulfillment partner and had been unimpressed with traditional 3PLs’ fulfillment capabilities and overall lack of D2C-friendliness.
As impressive as Athletic Brewing’s products are – beers brewed from high-quality, all-natural ingredients for “the modern-day beer drinker”- they needed an instant commerce solution to kick their customer experience up a notch and drive meaningful D2C growth.
After learning how Ohi could elevate their customer experience and drive significant ROI while keeping its powerful brand front-and-center, the brand turned to Ohi’s instant delivery solution.
Athletic Brewing provides its customers powerfully fast, brand-focused, and memorable post-purchase experiences via the Ohi platform.
Athletic Brewing now enjoys a 30% uptick in repeat purchase rates on Ohi-shipped orders compared to orders delivered through FedEx/UPS. Additionally, athletic Brewing customers rated Ohi an average of 4.7/5 stars.
With Ohi’s shipping options – 2-hour, same-day, and next-day delivery – the DTC-focused brand delivers great-tasting beers to its customers alongside a custom-branded post-purchase experience.
Customers receive real-time tracking information via email/SMS (tailored to Athletic Brewing’s brand guidelines), allowing them to track their orders to their doors.
So how does Ohi do it?
We keep our inventory “hyperlocal” in micro-fulfillment centers in major metropolitan areas. This enables our partner brands to deliver their products to customers within the same day or two hours – in time for a spontaneous dinner, a late or early morning drink, or to relieve period pain.
We’re proactive – our dedicated teams analyze your brand’s product demand at the SKU level, consistently working with the operations team to ensure there’s sufficient inventory available across the micro-fulfillment networks. In addition, Ohi’s account managers work with brands to ensure seamless procedures while identifying ways to boost efficiency and ROI for our partner brands.
Our technology constantly monitors delivery speed and consistency within the Ohi network, modifying courier utilization and other factors to ensure customers get what they ordered within the chosen delivery window.
And because we keep our inventory as close to customers as possible, our packaging and last-mile shipping are also more environmentally friendly.
Fast & free wins the race!
Many of the world’s top marketplaces and big retailers are already looking beyond same-day delivery and upping the ante once again with sub-hour delivery options.
And with 15-minute delivery becoming a thing in New York City and elsewhere, your D2C brand crossing the finish line in 3-5 business days just won’t suffice any longer. The race will have been long over before your brand reaches the line.
About Ohi
At Ohi, we’ve flipped the script for e-commerce fulfillment, transforming it from what is traditionally seen as a cost center into a growth engine. Brands join the Ohi platform to deliver powerfully fast, brand-focused, and memorable post-purchase experiences that enable them to grow. Want to learn more about how Ohi enables instant commerce? Get in touch today.