St. Louis-based Urban Boundaries is a seller of men’s, women’s and kid’s fashion accessories. Founded in October 2005, they currently employ three full-time staffers, but when the holidays approach, Urban Boundaries adds part- time employees to the payroll and braces itself for the busy shopping season. “Fourth quarter sales are huge for us,” says Wallace Gustafson, owner of Urban Boundaries. “It was always a challenge to manage the increase in orders, shipping logistics and customer service calls, plus take the time to train our part-time holiday help.”

Urban Boundaries worked to perfect the order and distribution process, but, says Gustafson, “Nothing is fool-proof. On an annual basis, we were making about $20,000 worth of mistakes due to human error...most of them during the busy, Q4 holiday season when we employ temporary workers.” Mistakes included shipping the wrong item, shipping to the wrong person, re-shipping the correct product and paying to get the wrong product shipped back to the warehouse. “It was frustrating,” Gustafson says.

Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA) has helped the company structure its staffing and reduce costly mistakes during the busy season. “Outsourcing our shipping to FBA has helped us overhaul everything we do. We’ve now streamlined our internal systems, cutting the time we spend on distribution and customer service calls by 50 percent.” Urban Boundaries also has seen a reduction in human error relating to shipping mistakes, which Gustafson estimates will save the company $10,000. In addition, the company has been able to increase efficiencies with fewer temporary holiday workers in Q4, saving it another $5,000 to $6,000 in holiday budgets. “The feedback from our customers has been more positive too,” says Gustafson. “They get their packages very quickly with little to no problems and we’re able to offer them some of the best shipping rates out there.”

“Our business wouldn’t be where it is today without Amazon,” says Gustafson. “Our goal for the future is to convert as much product as possible to FBA, ideally 50 percent of our inventory,” says Gustafson. Since Amazon charges a flat rate for an unlimited number of SKUs, “we’re also looking to increase the variety of products we offer our customers.”