Bee Inventive – Flow™

Father-son duo, Stuart and Cedar Anderson, had a simple goal: to create a beehive that allowed them to harvest honey without disturbing the bees. After 10 years of innovation and hard work toward their concept, it took a mere 15 minutes to receive over $250,000 USD in investments through their Indiegogo campaign. Interest didn’t stop there. Bee Inventive’s crowdfunding campaign is the most successful one of its kind to be initiated outside the U.S. and is the mos successful campaign ever to be hosted on Indiegogo, raising over $12.2 million in just eight weeks.

After its tremendous crowdfunding success, the company realized the support that would be necessary as they transitioned from launching a successful product to developing a full fledged ecommerce brand. Bee Inventive sought a provider that could scale with its business and support the nuances that come along with the startup phase of business. Ingram Micro Services was a natural fit, given its partnership with Indiegogo and the tailored fulfillment solutions it offers for crowdfunded campaigns. “When our Indiegogo campaign generated over $13 million in backer funding, we were excited – but unprepared. Thanks to Ingram Micro Services, we were able to manage the full extent of our pledged backorders and whip out our product efficiently, maintaining our Indiegogo campaign commitment and paving the road for success as a fully-fledged global business. Today we’re shipping our Flow Hive products all around the world.” – Cedar Anderson, Founder, Bee Inventive

After partnering with Ingram Micro Services, the first order of business was for Bee Inventive to import its Indiegogo crowdfunded orders into the Shipwire Platform to be fulfilled. (a simple process, thanks to automation). Once backorders were managed, Bee Inventive’s Shopify storefront was integrated with the Shipwire Platform via a pre-built connector, enabling Bee Inventive to ship from any of Ingram Micro’s global fulfillment centers. Bee Inventive also receives worldwide visibility of all its orders and inventory levels.

Ingram Micro’s 154 locations in 45 countries give Bee Inventive access to major geographic regions all over the world. This allows the company to set up fulfillment centers quickly and easily, meeting demand in new markets as interest emerges – all while maintaining cost-effective transportation of the large hives.

Time is precious (and arguably of particular value to startups). By working with a single provider to manage multiple fulfillment centers and small parcel transportation, Bee Inventive was able to keep its employees focused on business growth, rather than operations. Initially, the company fulfilled orders from three U.S. locations, one location in Netherlands, two locations in Canada, and its native Australia. Once some time had passed and volume growth was easier to manage, Bee Inventive used data pulled by the Shipwire Platform to determined key markets for expansion. In addition to the network being managed by one provider, Bee Inventive is provided with a single, highly responsive point of contact to help manage its account, no matter where inventory is stored.

For Bee Inventive, the journey has just begun. The company continues to uncover innovations within the age-old tradition of beekeeping and is constantly improving its product (without disturbing the bees, of course). Since successfully launching a product through Indiegogo, the team continues to work on product development. With Ingram Micro Services managing operations behind the scenes, the Bee Inventive stays busy with innovation instead of order fulfillment.