Back to the Roots

Overview

Back to the Roots is a popular organic gardening company whose mission is to connect families and kids with where food comes from by helping them grow their own produce. Their products include indoor grow kits, an extensive line of organic seed packets, and raised beds for balcony or patio gardening. With an emphasis on childhood education, their indoor gardening kits have rapidly gained popularity among families and teachers whose window sills have begun to transform into organic gardens.

Back to the Roots found success in marketing healthy eating and horticulture education as a wholesome family activity and sales boomed in major retail stores like Walmart and The Home Depot. From 2019 to 2020, Back to the Roots experienced unprecedented growth, with sales revenue up 300% YOY.

The company’s growth was already ramping up when stay-at-home guidelines related to the pandemic were implemented, and the promise of a fun, healthy and educational activity found an eager audience in parents who needed an activity to keep their kids’ hands and minds busy. In summary, Back to the Roots had a watershed year — and in order to keep up with growth, they sought out an ecommerce solution that could manage their volume and connect them with retailers, while leaving room for further expansion.

eCommerce Fulfillment

Back to the Roots sought an ecommerce fulfillment partner that could scale with their growth, especially during busy sales cycles and the holiday season. Their unique and fragile live products posed an opportunity for Shipwire to leverage specialized facility features and skilled labor to ensure proper product handling throughout the entire fulfillment process.

Back to the Roots has been working with Shipwire since 2015 for B2B and direct-to-consumer ecommerce order fulfillment. Using Shipwire’s centrally located facility in New Lenox, Illinois, the company is able to reach 93% of the U.S. population in approximately 2-days via ground shipping. Beyond physical order fulfillment, Back to the Roots leverages Shipwire’s order and inventory management for a fully integrated ecommerce fulfillment solution. Shipwire provides visibility into Back to the Root’s sales channels, real-time orders and inventory to ensure accurate order fulfillment.

Integration to Major Retailers

Back to the Roots faced challenges integrating with major retailers such as Target, Walmart and The Home Depot, and it’s common for big box retailers to impose strict and unique guidelines on B2B vendors. To ease such challenges, they wanted a technology-driven and streamlined way to ensure operational efficiency and reduce manual intervention and error. Using the Logicbroker platform, Back to the Roots was able to achieve connectivity between their business, major retail partners and their operations with Shipwire, resulting in a fully streamlined business and automated processes that enable retail success.

The Results

The efficiency of an end-to-end integration expedites order fulfillment and enables Back to the Roots to adhere to retailers’ service level agreements. Because of their success of integrating sales channels with Shipwire’s fulfillment network via Logicbroker, Back to the Roots has been able to expand into more than 5,000 new major retail locations over the past 12 months. Leveraging Shipwire for order fulfillment and Logicbroker for retail connectivity has helped Back to the Roots onboard new B2B retail partners and streamlined their operations to ensure products get to customers quickly for an amazing brand experience.