In the era of digital streaming, Vinyl Pursuit, a vintage record store chose to carefully restore & bring back vinyl records for music enthusiasts. Starting from classic rock, jazz, and blues, it offers the best music and stereo accessories.
However, with the expanding customer base across Canada and the US, the Vinyl team needed to securely ship the records. With the help of the PluginHive Shipping Solution, the Vinyl team automated the entire shipping process and achieved faster & effortless shipping.
Vinyl Pursuit: A Journey Towards Providing the Best Music Experience
Tammy Brown, the principal owner of Vinyl Pursuit wanted to turn one of her hobbies of collecting Vinyl records into a profession. That’s when she conceptualized Vinyl Pursuit – a one-stop website for vinyl record lovers that sold records and accessories associated with it.
Tim from Vinyl Pursuit said, “Tammy was looking to do something next. One of her hobbies is Vinyl records. She owns a sophisticated audio record-playing amplifier speaker system personally. Plus she’s got many contacts and people she knows in the music business. So the suggestion was raised that maybe she should or could start up a website that sold vinyl records”.
While this generation of millennials seems to embrace digital streaming, Vinyl Pursuit chose to bring back vinyl records for music purists. Most of its customers completely trust Vinyl Pursuit’s ways to acquire the records before making them available to its customers. Tim also mentions, “It’s a unique way to acquire products for a company because you’re not talking to a manufacturer and just ordering some inventory, you actually have to go find these records and they could be anywhere. And so Tammy was successful in acquiring quite a few thousand records”.
Real hunt for the Best eCommerce Platform and an Automated Shipping Solution
Vinyl Pursuit’s next move after coming up with a unique business idea was to identify an eCommerce platform. However, when it came to lowering shipping costs, speeding up the shipping process, and providing flexible shipping, Vinyl Pursuit faced continuous hurdles.
“I personally did research on the technical aspects of the various choices but the problem with many of them was that they were missing one of the most critical components which is Shipping”- Tim
Tim also added that “Most of them didn’t have shipping & their merchant had to figure it out on their own, with no integration with the eCommerce sites. All other things that you need to follow up like order & shipping confirmation, and tracking number. Those things need to happen automatically and a lot of these eCommerce platforms missed all these crucial features/functions of shipping.
As a Canadian-based company, Vinyl Pursuit ultimately trusted Shopify & Canada Post, the primary eCommerce platform & postal operator in Canada for delivering their products. And, determined to automate its whole shipping process, it relied on the PH MultiCarrier Shipping Label.
“I spent a lot of time researching that, and I ended up coming across all the commonly known or easy to find product shipping apps for Shopify. And during that process of research and examination and testing, I came across it on a blog mentioning Multi-Carrier Shipping Label MCSL”- says Tim
A Complete, Flexible & Intuitive Shopify Shipping App
With rising demand for Vinyl records from throughout Canada and the United States, the Vinyl team got down to the real work of finding a secure, efficient, quick, and cost-effective, packaging option. And, because records are frequently ordered in bundles, it needed to find a way to pack multiple items in one package.
PH MultiCarrier Shipping Label App’s intuitive packing options helped the Vinyl Pursuit to use Custom boxes. This reduced any unnecessary space around the records and helped them cut down the shipping costs too. Since these records are quite valuable, particularly rare releases or original editions, Vinyl Pursuit was also able to ensure its items using the app for further security.
With PluginHive’s Shopify shipping solution, Vinyl Pursuit successfully saved shipping costs by providing flexible shipping rates for its customers. For Canada & USA customers he offered both flat rates & Canada Post real-time rates considering the product price. In addition, the Vinyl team was able to include its preferred Canada Post services at the checkout.
According to Tim, “Realization that you could limit the number of carrier services from Canada Post and then let the app pick the fastest or the cheapest. From that limited number of choices I was able to decide that I wanted the app to be able to pick from rather than just the app picking from everything that Canada Post had to offer”.
With the app, Vinyl Pursuit could print shipping labels, and Canada Post manifests. This saved the Vinyl team a lot of time, effort, and, most importantly, a significant amount of money since Canada Post manifests are mandatory, and failing to provide them, results in manual billing at full rates and a loss of the automated discount.
In a nutshell, the PH MultiCarrier Shipping Label app eased Vinyl Pursuit’s pain points starting from packaging, rates, labels, manifests & lastly offering live tracking updates to its customers. It saw better customer retention & was able to provide a well-rounded customer experience too.
“This is working great, and, the customers relate to that very well. It works well with our profit modeling. It seems to be the perfect sort of balance for our customers anyway. It’s been looking really good. Nobody’s complaining, and it’s not holding up sales”- Tim
For Shopify stores, who are looking for a complete shipping solution with automated shipping service selection, Tim advises,
“I will definitely recommend PluginHive to other Shopify merchants who are looking for a solution with all the shipping functionalities”
Tim Meints
Check out our other customer success stories to see how PluginHive’s services are helping other online businesses all across the world with their shipping needs.
