About Glo
Glo Pals are a new concept on children’s sensory toys.
These light-up educational toys assist children with everything from learning color recognition to cause and effect. Glo, the overarching company, was born out of a classroom project at Mississippi State University.
Glo’s first patented products were Glo Cubes, which are liquid-activated, light up drink cubes.
After some early success with this product, a mother reached out to Glo with a moving story. She had seen Glo Cubes at a restaurant and after realizing that they were liquid-activated, took one home to place in the bath for her autistic son.
She explained that it was the first time in months that her son had taken a bath without crying. Inspired, the company pivoted and got to work making the first versions of Glo Pals in 2018.
Using the same light up, patented technology, adapted it for the children’s market, simply take a Glo Pal light up cube, drop it in water, and it instantly comes to life. Today, you can find Glo products in more than 1,400 stores across the USA and Canada and over 3 million products have been sold to customers in 36 countries.
Problem
Glo Pal’s rapid growth required agile shipping solutions and transparency across the supply chain.
In addition, Hagan found securing freight transport frustrating, inefficient, and time consuming. Instead of launching new products and expanding the company’s footprint, he was wasting time moving goods and speaking to logistics providers.
Furthermore, as the company scaled during the pandemic, shipping delays and extremely limited capacity made it increasingly difficult to meet customer demand – making it even more critical to set up an effective technical infrastructure to manage the business.
But finding the best software for the company’s needs took some exploration – there are a number of digital shipping solutions on the market, but not all created equal.
While it took some time, Glo found the best tech for their needs and this has made the business scalable.
One of the main digital solutions that has enabled Glo to grow is Freightos.com.
“It took us a ton of time to become happy with software that would grow with us. If you haven’t built a warehouse from literal scratch before, it can be a whirlwind. Everything from creating product SKUs that allow you to scale with new product offerings to placement of pallet racking can be extremely daunting.”
Solution
Glo has ironed out many supply challenges by developing a more streamlined process supported by digital solutions and software integrations – starting with booking a shipment with Freightos.com and paying for shipments via payment options on Freightos.com’s platform.
Once booked, every shipment is tracked from the origin to the destination warehouse so every Glo Cube or Glo Pal is accounted for. Plus, if there are any bumps along the way, Freightos.com’s customer success team is available around the clock so that Hagan and the team can keep working on growth instead of troubleshooting transport.
After goods are shipped, Glo receives and monitors the location of packages across various facilities and warehouses using Cin7 inventory management software. Finally, Glo sells its products through Shopify.
Incorporating Freightos.com into their shipping tech deck has given Glo peace of mind that their goods will be shipped on time and at the best available price. Initially, Glo negotiated shipping directly with logistics providers.
However, this was time-consuming and difficult to manage. Reaching out, waiting for answers, negotiating… all of these steps are circumvented by using the Freightos.com marketplace.
Now Hagan can access multiple, real-time freight quotes for any shipment, and instantly book the one that works the best. And with support throughout the shipping process as well as standard operating procedures for all logistics providers on the platform, Freightos.com is keeping GloPals and GloCubes moving smoother.
Ready to ship?
Access free, live freight quotes
Results
Since moving to Freightos.com to search, book, and manage international freight, Glo is getting the best freight quotes for their shipments in seconds instead of days. Plus they’re saving up to 20% on shipping costs.
The platform enables the comparison of multiple quotes in order to secure the best price and transit time for any shipment – as well as offering greener options for companies seeking to minimize their environmental impact. And the client dashboard has made managing multiple shipments simpler and more efficient, saving both time and money.
This has let Glo keep up with growing volumes of orders so they can scale their business faster (instead of worrying about freight).
“We’re big fans of Freightos.com. I love being able to log in and see all current shipments and approximate delivery dates. Freightos.com has also cut down our shipping costs by almost 20%. It allows us to compare quotes on demand and it’s so nice not to have to wait hours or days to get quotes back from a freight forwarder, just to find out they’re more expensive than what’s instantly available on Freightos.com.”
Growth plan 2022
Glo is launching a number of partnerships this year.
In addition to working with Sesame Street, product lines are launching in Kohl’s, Barnes & Noble, and SeaWorld locations later this year.
Glo will also have some new products in the works and the company will be focusing heavily on e-commerce operations – making faster, simpler, and cheaper international shipping an integral aspect of the business.
From school projects to full-time business, from two employees to 27, Glo is excited to see where this journey takes them. And Freightos.com will help get them there.
Hagan’s Top Supply Chain Tips for SMB Shippers
No one gets shipping better than small business owners. We asked Hagan what advice he would give other entrepreneurs looking to import goods internationally. Here are two core pieces of advice to keep your supply chain running smoother:
1. My biggest tip here is to be nice.
Everyone is going through the exact same troubles, so if you can come across to importers as nice and rational, they’re more likely to want to help you out. This really does go a long way and quite literally saved our Christmas shipment in 2021.
2. Second, planning is really important.
Think of all the steps – from manufacturing to distribution – and find out what is holdup you up and whether you can control it. For example, once we received products from our manufacturer and we were having an issue transferring the details to our warehousing software. The products were being delivered in cartons containing weird quantities and those quantities weren’t consistent. We worked with this manufacturer to set consistent quantities, which allowed our checks and receiving procedures to happen much more quickly.
