Table of Contents
** Minutes
Pivoting from fulfilling 100k orders per month ourselves, to leveraging a fulfillment expert
Eliminating labor planning and gaining time back to focus on strategic projects that drive growth
Having a frictionless 3PL onboarding and consequently crushing peak season
Having confidence that ShipBob can manage our marketplace orders when volume spikes
Going from a fulfillment team of 15 to 2 and saving 900 hours per week with ShipBob
Learn how seasoning company EZ Bombs outsourced fulfillment to ShipBob to save time and focus on more strategic projects in order to accelerate their growth.
Customer Profile
EZ Bombs was started by Tina Castaneda and her family in 2022. They sell packaged spices in the form of a compressed ball, or “bomb,” so consumers can make easy and delicious Mexican meals at home with just using a pot, water, and their meat of choice. EZ Bombs offers classic flavored bombs like birria, pozole, tinga, and turkey.
Key metrics
- Up to 5,000 orders per day
- 100,000+ shipments per month
- 2-person logistics team
About EZ Bombs
The traditional method of making birria, a tender, stewed Mexican meat dish, requires a variety of ingredients and takes hours to cook. Because of the lengthy process and ingredient list, many home cooks may be intimidated by making birria.
But Tina Castaneda knew that creating delicious, flavorful birria at home didn’t have to take so much time. As a result, she created EZ Bombs, which is a blend of herbs and spices, allowing the average person to easily add it to a crock pot, pressure cooker, or pot with water and their preferred meat to create a delicious meal.
Unlike seasoning packets or prepared marinades, EZ Bombs is an easy-to-use flavoring “bomb” (yes, like bath bombs, but for the kitchen) that is full of authentic Mexican flavor. Eventually EZ Bombs introduced additional flavor bombs, such as tinga and pozole.
EZ Bombs initially began out of Tina’s home, but as the brand’s popularity skyrocketed, they outgrew the space. At first, they decided to fulfill their own orders, but over time they realized they needed an expert fulfillment provider.
Learn how EZ Bombs selected ShipBob as their fulfillment partner, made the transition from self-fulfillment to completely outsourced, and how ShipBob has given them substantial time back so they can focus on strategic growth.
Pivoting from fulfilling 100k orders per month ourselves, to leveraging a fulfillment expert
As told to ShipBob by Brandon Castaneda, founder and CEO of EZ Bombs.
When we started EZ Bombs 14 months ago, our operations ran out of my mom’s house. There were 10 of us making the product there, fulfilling orders, and shipping out packages. USPS would come and do pickups daily, filling up 2 or 3 vans each day because we had so many orders.
We eventually moved into a co-manufacturing facility where another company was making our products, and we planned to fulfill orders ourselves. We even secured a warehouse to do fulfillment out of. We thought “Oh, we can handle it. It’s not that crazy.” But then things started to get super busy.
One month we shipped out almost 100,000 packages. It was a lot of around-the-clock manual work. Not only were we manually fulfilling orders ourselves, but we also had to manage the different channels we sold on and navigate their unique challenges. For example, we sell a lot of EZ Bombs through TikTok Shop, and we had to make sure we were keeping up with TikTok’s rules and stringent dispatch rates.
At that point, we began talking with 3 or 4 different fulfillment providers, one of which was ShipBob.
“We took a tour of ShipBob’s Moreno Valley fulfillment center and attended their annual merchant event, Fulfilled. Being able to see the inner workings of the facility, spend time with the ShipBob team, meet the co-founders, and talk with brands that were already working with ShipBob laid a great foundation.”
Brandon Castaneda, Founder and CEO of EZ Bombs
Making those connections and getting a behind-the-scenes glimpse at the fulfillment operations helped us get a good understanding that ShipBob was a good-sized company that could not only handle our current order volume but could continue supporting our growth as we scaled.
Plus, we liked that ShipBob can ship and fulfill all over the United States and around the world and that we could position inventory in their various hubs to ship products to customers more cost-effectively.
By August, we decided to halt doing fulfillment on our end and entirely move into ShipBob’s fulfillment centers.
Eliminating labor planning and gaining time back to focus on strategic projects that drive growth
When we were fulfilling orders out of our own warehouse, it felt like we were growing two businesses at the same time. One was a sales and marketing business, selling our EZ Bombs, and the other was a logistics business. Outsourcing fulfillment to ShipBob allowed us to focus 100% of our efforts on building and growing our ecommerce business.
A huge challenge of doing in-house fulfillment was managing staff and navigating labor challenges. If someone called out sick or just didn’t show up at all, that ruined the day for everyone else.
Partnering with ShipBob has allowed us to focus on the more important aspects of the business and break out of the repetitive cycle of scheduling labor and managing employees.
It did not make sense for us to focus on fulfillment ourselves when we could outsource to experts that could manage it for us. In the end, we are saving money because we do not have the variable cost of labor, and we are not having to pay employees overtime when we are short on staff and we are working late to get orders shipped out.
We have no interest in reverting back to doing our own fulfillment. With ShipBob, fulfillment is just one less thing we have to worry about. As a result, we get to keep growing other areas of our business.
ShipBob was there to help us as we scaled. If we had not made the transition, we would have found a way to make fulfillment happen, but it would have been a lot more difficult, and we would not have been able to focus on more important aspects of the business.
As we grew, we knew the first thing we needed to do was get manufacturing out of my mom’s house, which we did. The next biggest priority was getting fulfillment sorted out.
“The month after we offloaded fulfillment to ShipBob we were able to pick our heads up a little and realize there were other, more strategic things we could do instead of shipping. Outsourcing fulfillment was the last piece we needed to unlock in order to keep growing, and ShipBob helped us with that.”
Brandon Castaneda, Founder and CEO of EZ Bombs
Having a frictionless 3PL onboarding and consequently crushing peak season
We got started with ShipBob in August 2024, just a few months before peak season. Onboarding with ShipBob was pretty easy and frictionless. It was mostly a matter of knowing when we were going to be done fulfilling orders and ShipBob would start. Making the switch to ShipBob was a lot more seamless than transitioning with some of our other partners. Implementation went well, and the system was straightforward and easy to use.
“When peak season came around, most of the EZ Bombs team was out of the office. Because we outsourced fulfillment to ShipBob, our team was able to spend the holidays traveling and with family. Since we did not have to ship orders ourselves, we got some free time back. ShipBob made it for a really great peak season.”
Brandon Castaneda, Founder and CEO of EZ Bombs
Having confidence that ShipBob can manage our marketplace orders when volume spikes
We sell EZ Bombs on TikTok Shop and through Walmart and Amazon. Using ShipBob for fulfillment has allowed us to launch our product on various platforms and never run out of inventory. We know that when all else fails, ShipBob can get orders out regardless of the sales channel.
For example, if we have 20,000 units in stock and a big sale happens or we go viral, and we run through that inventory and we stock out, it’s not a quick process to get more inventory into each marketplace’s hub. Sometimes it takes 2 to 3 weeks for all of our inventory to be received and accurately reflected in our marketplace dashboards. With ShipBob, that’s not a problem. We’re able to get inventory into ShipBob’s locations, stowed, and ready to ship out in 2 to 3 days. Just 2 days compared to 2 weeks is a huge advantage.
If we stock out with any of the marketplaces we sell through or get backlogged on orders, we route those orders through ShipBob and ShipBob is able to backfill all of those orders to ensure products are going out to customers quickly. That has been really big for us.
“By working with ShipBob, we don’t have to focus on logistics anymore. We’re more focused on how to make EZ Bombs bigger, better, and provide a better experience for our customers. That has been especially great for TikTok. We’ve shifted our focus from fulfilling orders to creating better content, building the brand, and honing in on our marketing. ”
Brandon Castaneda, Founder and CEO of EZ Bombs
Going from a fulfillment team of 10 to 2 and saving 1,600 hours per month with ShipBob
Before ShipBob, we had 10 employees dedicated to picking and packing orders all day. If you take that and multiply it by the 40 hours per week they worked, that’s up to 1,600 hours per month of just fulfilling orders. Outsourcing our fulfillment to ShipBob has definitely given us a lot of time back.
Now we have 2 people in charge of logistics, but they split their time between sales and logistics, so if you take their time spent on fulfillment and divide it up, it’s the work of one person.
Despite our quick growth, EZ Bombs is a pretty lean team. Most of the people that are working with us now are the same people who were with us in the beginning. Since outsourcing fulfillment, we’ve been able to restructure our team so we’re focused on more strategic growth initiatives. The transition from picking and packing boxes to optimizing our logistics strategy has been a huge area of growth for our team. They’re all doing a great job navigating that and we’re happy to have ShipBob’s support.
What’s next for EZ Bombs
We have new flavors that are going to be launching this year, which we’re excited about. But the biggest thing for us is moving into retail. We have quite a few big opportunities in front of us. A lot of customers are asking us for that, so we’re looking forward to rolling that out and having ShipBob as a partner to help us navigate it.
EZ Bombs’ team at ShipBob
Pete Cashen
Pete is the Account Executive who helped EZ Bombs get started with ShipBob.
Neal Rogers
Neal is the Sr. Implementation Specialist who onboarded EZ Bombs to ShipBob.
Allison Sculley
Allison is the Merchant Success Manager who supports EZ Bombs.
Partner with ShipBob
If you’re interested in implementing ShipBob’s fulfillment solution, connect with our team to get started.
