The Brand
DTC Personal safety brand, Empowered by Ashley, was launched in February 2021 after the founders' close friends & family began to reveal too many personal stories of sexual assault and harassment.
The business grew exponentially, recognised for its high-quality personal safety alarms, mission, and social impact through donations & awareness campaigns.
With substantial traffic and conversions coming from the brand's mission to keep women safe in the UK and worldwide, the digitally native brand grew incredibly quickly through Facebook Ads, Google Ads and Influencer Seeding.
The challenge
When sales exceeded 6,000+ units per month within 8 months, the brand found its small team doing nothing other than picking & packing orders all day (well into the early morning hours).
The other areas of the business were being neglected.
The brand knew it had to act quickly to ensure customer satisfaction.
That included: customers receiving their orders quickly across the world without mistakes, orders prepared for a memorable unboxing experience, and influencer gifts sent out to maintain growth, all while managing the other aspects of the business as the brand continued to grow.
Albeit a good problem – growing too fast to keep up – it was a problem that could quickly deteriorate and damage the brands' reputation.
The solution
Deliver quickly & beautifully. Remain profitable. Put customers first.
To do so meant finding a fulfilment partner that understood the challenges of the business:
- Royal Mail Large Letter requirements
- Orders wrapped in custom tissue paper
- Custom packaging
- Custom inserts
- Handwritten notes for VIP customers & influencers
- Automated workflows for fraudulent orders
- Global shipping solutions
- A system a VA could be quickly trained on
- A portal that puts the customer in control of their orders & returns
The Empowered by Ashley team was introduced to Hutch by Ama at Plantmade.
In under 1 week, the team delivered their entire SKUs and packaging inventory to Hutch.
By the end of the day, Hutch was shipping the backlog of 600+ Ashley orders.
The Results
Over a year later, Ashley has shipped (via Hutch) over 60,000+ Alarms and launched several new products with Hutch.
The Empowered by Ashley team has been able to scale globally, operating with just 1 full-time founder and a VA to ensure they stayed as lean as possible.
As Hutch rolled out improved features & capabilities such as WorkFlows, AfterCare, and Influencer Gifting (in partnership with Kynship), the Ashley team have taken advantage of them to maintain their exponential growth.
All while reducing shipping costs, recouping hundreds of human work hours per week, and reducing their need for a warehouse by relying upon Hutch.
Thousands of Ashley reviews prove that customers are delighted with the experience too.
