How The Feather saves handling time with a multi-courier solution

The Feather is Australia’s largest seller and importer of the widest selection of feather plumes from around the world, including the ever-glamourous ostrich, peacock and pheasant plumes. All sourced to the highest standard and a natural bi-product.

“We have less stress. I kick myself for not using Starshipit sooner!”

The business is managed by the owner, Shelley Steinwede, who inherited The Feather from her mother-in-law over fifteen years ago, and Leanne Cotte, who has been working with Shelley for close on ten years. Leanne is responsible for getting all the orders out the door to their clientele who are mostly in Australia and New Zealand, with some orders coming in from international clients.

The challenge: shipping feathers can be heavy going

As fashion trends have shifted over the years, The Feather product line has evolved alongside these shifting demands. For example, as Leanne explains, “With the rise of the boho fashion look we decided to extend our product line to include dried flowers. We keep up with what our customers want, who are primarily in fashion and entertainment, and the wedding and crafts industries.”

As orders increased, what didn’t increase were the number of hours in a day. “Some days we would have over 100 orders, so you can only imagine the time it would take me. There were also more errors, as it was easy to type in the incorrect address, so I was constantly under the pump to get all my shipments done before our postal pickup.”

Another time-consuming task was ensuring that the delicate plumes and flowers were packaged safely as a lot of the orders were destined for high-end Great Gatsby parties or a dream wedding.

Top tip: You pay penalty fees for every parcel returned from an incorrect address, so ensuring all packages go out with correct addresses as much as possible will save you money.

The solution: an easy-to-use shipping solution

Leanne and Shelley would often wonder how big brands manage shipping high volumes every day. It seemed highly unlikely that they would also be sitting for hours manually processing thousands of orders one at a time.

Eventually Shelley and Leanne reached breaking point and Shelley reached out to her network to find a shipping solution. A friend of Shelley’s recommended Starshipit as a multi-courier shipping solution that would easily plug into their online store.

However, Leanne was resistant. She knew there had to be a better way, but she had worked out a system and didn’t want to disrupt the process, as slow as it was.

“I’m going to be very honest and say I wasn’t entirely sold when Shelley told me we were changing over, even when I knew the way I was currently doing shipping was not efficient.

The outcome: 80% saved in handling time

Leanne is more than happy they started automating all shipping tasks with Starshipit, “We save 80% handling time, which means I have more time to focus on other areas of the business.”