How 310 Nutrition solved their backorder issues
The healthy weight loss subscription company, 310 Nutrition, had time-consuming admin problems on Shopify. The company has been operating for a little over a decade and has successfully sold over 4 million of their indulgent shakes, but they were having trouble with subscription boxes and backorders. Jessica-Rose Garcia has been their Customer Service and Sales Manager since 2021. She was dealing with the brunt of their order management and was seeking a solution.
“We had a lot of backorder issues, and stock tracking in Shopify is non-existent, so we were relying heavily on editing orders,” she said. Many Shopify merchants know the problems you face when it comes to inventory tracking on the platform. Since Shopify doesn't allow for real-time inventory visibility across different channels, orders sometimes have to be canceled due to stock shortages. To add to that, Shopify also doesn't track when products are going to be restocked, so merchants have to search for companies to partner with in order to sell backordered goods.
In search of a new Shopify partnership
The company sells healthy weightloss consumer packaged goods (CPGs) via one-time purchases and subscriptions. Garcia’s team mainly needed order editing tools for their subscription purchases to ensure customers kept receiving their coveted supplements and smoothies.
At first, Garcia and her team used an order editing app teeming with problems. “I would go into an order and swap a red pen that costs $14.99 for a different blue pen that also costs $14.99. I’d delete one pen and then add the new one, and it would say I owed the customer a refund of $352.99. It was all over the place,” she said. That clearly showed that 310 Nutrition needed to find a new partner for order management.
“For subscription orders, we can never use Shopify’s native editing function since we use the Recharge app,” she explained. On Shopify, when an app creates a new order using the Shopify API, Shopify’s editing capabilities are disabled. The only way you can edit orders created via the API is with another app. Garcia’s team had to resort to canceling orders and manually recreating new ones until her dev team could build their own solution, or find a reliable app partner.
Solving backorder issues
Backorder issues aren’t exclusive to 310 Nutrition. Almost every ecommerce and retail company has had their fair share of problems when items go out of stock. Whether it’s inventory tracking or supplier complications. In Garcia’s case, sometimes items included in their subscription box would go out of stock, but orders were piling up. Luckily she managed to find a remedy.
“We found Edit Order, and at first, I didn’t think it had the functionality we needed, but then I saw Advanced Mode. I switched [the app] to Advanced Mode and realized this was way better,” she said. Garcia needed specific edits for her orders, especially since most subscription orders stick around in the Shopify admin for longer than 180 days. With Advanced Mode she was able to edit those older subscription orders and change customer details, product SKUs, and process line item discounts.
“With backorder issues, a customer would place an order, and it slips through the cracks that we actually don’t have the item in stock. We use Cleverific Order Editor to perform a swap.”
“With backorder issues, a customer would place an order, and it slips through the cracks that we actually don’t have the item in stock. We use Edit Order to perform a swap,” she explained. “Sometimes, we have the wrong SKU, so we need to use Edit Order to delete the product and put in the new SKU. It looks the same for the customer, but we can actually fulfill the order since we could change it to the proper SKU in the backend.”
Easier product launches
Once backorders were handled, Garcia realized that her team could use Edit Order for more than just backorder issues.
There are some seasons when Garcia’s team at 310 Nutrition is editing upwards of 80 orders per month, especially when new products and flavors are launched. During those times, pricing can quickly shift, and Garcia’s team has to be prepared.
“We have a new formula that we launched, and at the same time, we’re vaulting a lot of our existing flavors. Because of that, this [product] gap is happening on our website, and while we’re going through this hectic time, Edit Order has saved my butt,” she laughed. “I love that I can change the unit price of an item. With the other app, I would have to discount a product, and because of the tax, this variable always existed and was a huge pain. I love that you don’t have to do that with Edit Order; you can just effectively change the unit price.”
“I love that I can change the unit price of an item. With the other app, I would have to discount a product, and because of the tax, this variable always existed and was a huge pain. I love that you don’t have to do that with Edit Order; you can just effectively change the unit price.”
With order editing taken care of, whether its for problems with backorders or to make product launches easier, Garcia and her team can accurately and reliably get back to doing what they do best. Backorders for subscription boxes become less of an emergency, and her team has more time to provide 5-star-worthy customer support.
