Customer Success Story - Candyl

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“Partnering with Atomix was one of the best decisions we made for Candyl, and to this day Atomix remains our trusted partner for enabling our growth”

• DTC Brand: Candyl
• HQ: Los Angeles, California
• Founder & CEO: John Merrifield
• Industry: Consumer Goods
• Website: candyl.com

Background: Founder John Merrifield started Candyl.co to reinvent the candle industry. In 2019, he started designing and testing different variations of flameless candles in Los Angeles in search of the perfect combination of an aesthetically pleasing design, an easy-to-use product, and well-rounded aromas. As a result, he developed a flameless candle with a diffuser to have the look and feel of a real candle but with the ability to add essential oils for a natural and relaxing aroma. After launching in early 2021, his journey quickly began with early success.

Here’s his story.

Growing Pains: After finding the right manufacturer to produce his product, he had to find a fulfillment partner to handle his shipping and fulfillment.

“Early on, I made the decision to utilize a fulfillment partner. For me, I knew I wanted a partner that had the right technology, had minimal fees, and the flexibility to scale with my new business. I spoke with several different partners and finding one to start out with when I had zero volume was nearly impossible.”

He learned that most fulfillment partners want established volume or have minimums despite a business plan or strategy to scale. When we spoke with John, we knew his business acumen and market fit would lead to a successful company, but of course, unexpected problems arose.

“After receiving our shipment from China, we became aware of some quality control issues, which resulted in an immediate need to conduct testing on our inventory. Atomix consulted with us, planned the project, and executed it with flying colors, on par with time and budget estimates.”

Being experienced with handling and managing a wide range of special projects, our Pod Managers operate efficiently and expeditiously in order to ensure high-quality, customized customer experiences are delivered. Our Managers are included in all communication and provide responses on any task within 15 minutes. They are trained to not only be an extension of our Client’s team but their eyes, ears, and hands when it comes to their physical products.

“This type of special project, billed at a reasonable rate, would have been impossible at an Amazon/FBA warehouse. Our Chinese supplier threw us a curveball, and Atomix knocked it out of the park for us. If you are a startup or a small business, you need to place value in this type of service and flexibility. In our case, it saved us thousands of dollars and months of headaches.”

Opportunity to Scale: While flexibility, personalized services are valuable, the software capabilities are equally important to drive a great experience. From API integrations to receiving orders directly from Shopify to sending branded tracking labels, it’s important to have a light weight and intuitive system business owners can easily understand, check daily, and efficiently solve problems to focus on growth.

“The team was incredibly hands-on with the onboarding process, and streamlined the integration processes of our multiple online stores. Whether you are familiar with database migrations or not, having the team at Atomix put together our back-end order flow was incredibly valuable and freed up our time to focus on delivering a great customer experience.”

In order to scale from 0 to 300+ orders per month in a short period of time requires an easy process and have systems in place to manage the flexibility and growth. When one of our other Subscription Box clients is shipping 10,000 orders with 200 SKUs, they operate in a completely different Pod with unique processes in order to eliminate the potential errors of mixing up brands and shipping incorrect orders. Additionally, the Pod Model allows brands to scale and flex up/down during launches or seasons and provides a systematic structure to create and deliver a high-touch customer experience.

When we call our Warehouse our Home, we literally mean it :)

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