Subscription eCommerce Fulfilment Case Study: Inspire Me Korea

As consumers increasingly demand convenience and tailored experiences, multichannel retailers enjoy phenomenal growth by offering a curated range of products monthly.

There are two types of subscription models. One is for FMCG ‘staple’ goods, such as Amazon’s Subscribe and Save service, designed to enable consumers to buy in bulk at discounted rates on a regular, often monthly basis. As for the second type, brands such as Inspire Me Korea offer a selection of goods inside a monthly box designed for passionate consumers about a particular area of culture, topic, or hobby. In the case of this Parcelhub client, the subject matter is everything there is to learn about Korean culture.

How it all began

With a background studying marketing and entrepreneurship at university, Diana Chan (Founder and CEO) always had a creative streak but felt that while learning theory was one challenge, putting it into practice was another. After graduating, Diana decided to go travelling for a few months. Visiting Korea, she realised that while there was a lot about their culture that she enjoyed, it was out of reach for many:

“I came up with an idea of developing a brand that makes Korean produce that isn’t available through conventional, mainstream channels more accessible, arranging an assortment of unique products into a box, such as a magazine about the nation’s history and culture, accompanied with snacks, beauty, and souvenir items.

“We’ve also worked with small independent designers and artists, making exclusive products such as calligraphy items and origami pieces. Last Christmas, for example, we had a festive box and our motivation-themed box, designed to help many of our subscribers, who are current students, through their April exam period. Generally, we try to make our box contents fun simultaneously and educational.”

Growing the brand

During the brand’s launch phase, Diana’s sister Alice (now Chief Marketing Officer) had been travelling around the world. With a background in marketing for global brands such as All Saints, Alice’s skill has been a welcome addition, a vital component for ensuring the retailer’s future success.

Selling a range of subscription plans, taster boxes and accessories via a Cratejoy website on Amazon and Etsy marketplaces. Inspire Me Korea organically generated demand through word of mouth and social media by connecting with Korean culture-obsessed influencers and their box subscribers. With more than 20,000 Instagram followers and over 3,400 YouTube channel subscribers, the customer-centric company engages with their followers for feedback, running polls with photos and videos of new product ideas.

Tailored Fulfilment by Parcelhub

Inspire Me Korea initially carried out fulfilment in-house: “For the first six months, with the help of our mother, we were packing the boxes ourselves, in our front room and sending them from our local postal office. It became too time-consuming and impractical, so we decided to find an appropriate eCommerce shipping and fulfilment provider.”

Over the last three years, Inspire Me Korea have enjoyed strong growth, with monthly subscription shipping volumes increasing sharply in Christmas 2017. Selling mainly to UK consumers, the retailers also ship internationally to Canada, the USA, Australia and more than thirty other countries.

Like many Parcelhub customers, Diana and Alice decided to outsource more than just their delivery management by outsourcing the storage and pick and pack processes.

Diana added: “Parcelhub’s carrier management solution saved us loads of time with order processing; we decided that to be able to focus on product sourcing truly, development and marketing, we would need to outsource to a specialist eCommerce fulfilment provider. Luckily Parcelhub offered us just that!

“Donna Smitton (Account Director, Parcelhub) introduced us to the Fulfilment team, and we’ve just been so impressed with their attention to detail. Alex (Grayston, Account Manager at Parcelhub) has been highly considerate and quick to respond to situations and is deeply involved when developing new ideas for packaging and product selection.

“Before outsourcing these operations, it would take us about four days per month to pack the enormous number of boxes. Outsourcing is more efficient and has enabled us to focus better on our core competencies; marketing, product design and development”.

Inspire Me Korea ships pallets of wholesale goods to the Parcelhub fulfilment centre in Nottingham. At this point, the sortation team packages the items per the retailer’s various customisations.

Diana continued: “some subscribers want gift messages, for example, and before outsourcing fulfilment, this became very trying. We’re so happy with Parcelhub because they are agile and flexible and can carry out these customisations. Other fulfilment providers couldn’t offer that level of attention to detail.”

In the future, Inspire Me Korea would like to expand its offering with product diversification and establish a stronger foothold internationally. Diana concluded: “Our goal is to inspire people worldwide about different cultures. Our vision is to bring people closer together; we believe world problems often result from misunderstanding – by educating people and giving them better access to different cultures, our brand will hopefully make a difference.”

Tailored fulfilment and distribution

Parcelhub, part of the Whistl Group, provides tailored fulfilment solutions to retailers, brands, agencies, printers, and publishers worldwide, with extensive experience storing and distributing apparel, daily deals products, gifts, homewares, PC hardware, novelty goods, subscription boxes, catalogues, point of sale material, brochures and magazines.

For companies sending volumes of more than 300 items a day, Whistl also offers bespoke fulfilment solutions for direct-to-consumer and business-to-business orders.