How a Subscription Box Company Uses Make to Ship Over 500 Boxes/mo

In the subscription ecommerce space, process is king. 

The industry exploded when the pandemic hit in 2020, luring more companies than ever to enter the market. With so much competition to face, every manual task and process, and the mistakes that they create, amplifies their damaging effects on businesses. 

But if these businesses can master their processes, they can minimize these damaging effects and, in turn, gain an edge on their competitors. 

If there’s a company that has chosen this path for survival in the subscription ecommerce industry, it’s Dogsie, one of the first businesses to offer subscription boxes for dog owners in Czechia. 

As a small ecommerce company that sells themed subscription boxes that switch themes every other month, Dogsie decided to adopt an automation-first mindset to help master their processes. As a result, they’ve been able to skyrocket their growth and make thousands of dogs’ tails wag every month. 

But with over 500 customers to service every month, they still have over 500 boxes to send and over 500 opportunities to either nail their processes or fumble them. And when they first started their company, they were doing the latter more often than not. 

Slow, manual, and repetitive: When processes show their teeth

When Dogsie first started their company, they relied heavily on manual labor to review and package hundreds of orders on a monthly basis. This process took hours to complete, lacked scalability, and was rife with human error. And with hundreds of subscriptions to keep track of, they were up to their ears in work.  

“It was very, very time consuming”, says Tomáš Pokorný, co-founder of Dogsie. 

At first, it took a minimum of an hour to review orders and another hour to package them. But as orders increased, so did the hours spent on these processes.

As a result, they weren’t able to ship orders the day their customers ordered them without significantly increasing their costs. They also found themselves spending far too much time on business operations and not enough on business development, which was crucial for their growth. 

“Eventually, we realized that we needed to delegate and manage our processes with automation,” says Pokorný. “And, more importantly, stop relying on manual labor.”

Teaming up with the process whisperer – Make 

By manually completing their order management and fulfillment processes, Dogsie couldn’t offer same-day delivery to their customers. They were also shipping the wrong products every now and then. As a result, they decided to automate both processes. 

To automatically review their orders and check for product availability at their fulfillment center, they started building automated workflows in Make. Then, they tapped a fulfillment center to handle their packing, labeling, and shipping.

Here’s a scenario Dogsie built in Make to review their orders:

As you can see, it’s a complex one, but it has streamlined a long, repetitive process for Dogsie. They had to put in the work to master automation and build this monster of a scenario. But it paid off – and they only had to do it once.  

Today, all Dogsie has to do is send orders to their fulfillment center through Slack. 

They’ll only get notified when there is a note in the order, allergies, or something that prevents an order from being sent to their fulfillment center. And even then, they can just modify the order right in Google sheets and send it for fulfillment immediately after. 

The ultimate treat: Same-day delivery for customers

Investing in automation has been a godsend for Dogsie. 

“With Make, we were able to eliminate almost all human error from our order management process and save more than 80% of the time previously spent on it,” says Pokorný. “This has allowed us to send orders on the same day that we receive them and devote significantly more time to business development and drive our business’ growth, regardless if we have hundreds or thousands of orders each month.”

Dogsie’s full embrace of automation has also enhanced and modernized their approach to work. They have evolved into an automation-first company, running over 55 automations on a daily basis and operating more efficiently and effectively than ever before.  

“As an ecommerce business, we have to use a ton of different apps to run our business,” says Pokorný. “But before we adopt any new tools or technology, we always think about how they will fit within our automation efforts.” 

Making tails wag one automation at a time

Building automations on Make has revamped the way Dogsie works and generated results for their business that they only would have previously dreamed of. But the aspect of their business that automation has impacted the most transcends business processes and financial statements  –  it’s their company vision. 

“Our vision at Dogsie is to build a team that’s thrilled to come to work everyday because they’re bringing dogs as much happiness as possible,” says Pokorný. “We make over 500 dogs wag their tails every month with our subscription boxes. And a big reason why we’re able to do this is automation.” 

The majority of subscription ecommerce companies struggle with order management and fulfillment. 

What's worse, many of them end up spending thousands of dollars on custom-built solutions that take months to deploy and don't scale as the business grows. 

Make, on the other hand, lets you execute processes with the speed and precision that enables you to scale at a flourishing rate and break away from the pack  – all without breaking the bank. 

More than enough to celebrate, or in the case of Dogsie, to bark with joy.