The Closeout Connection + Getcho: Every Order Ships at the Lowest Quoted Rate

The Results

The integration with Shopify was seamless and took almost no effort on our end, which made setup a breeze. Orders are processed quickly, deliveries are consistently reliable, and our customers love the speed and convenience. This service has truly elevated our customer experience, and we’ve noticed a positive impact on satisfaction and repeat purchases.

- Gabe Weiss, The Closeout Connection

• 25% lower total shipping spend since partnering with Getcho
• Not a single SKU loses money on shipping anymore, including heavy, oversized home goods shipped to zone 8
• Every order is quoted across the full menu: local couriers on the Getcho network, the national carriers, and the regional carriers
• Unified tracking on every order and sharper, more accurate shipping rates at checkout

The Challenge

The Closeout Connection is a five-store, one-warehouse home goods business that has served Cedarhurst, NY; Brooklyn, NY; and Lakewood, NJ for the past 30 years. They sell upscale bedding, tablecloths, dinnerware and towels at closeout prices, and a lot of what they sell is big, heavy, or both.

Like many 30-year-old businesses, The Closeout Connection started retail-first. They launched their Shopify site just over a year ago. Shortly after launch, they installed Getcho’s 5-star same-day local delivery Shopify app to offer local service to customers within 15 miles of their stores. That covered two kinds of shopper:

• In-store shoppers who want separate transport for their purchases. Some don’t want to schlep a large home goods order home. Others buy something that includes a SKU from another store (“We don’t have the lucite frames here, but I can send from the Lakewood store”).
• Online shoppers who want the fastest possible service.

The partnership expanded from there. We found that courier delivery is often more economical than parcel for big-and-bulky categories, so Closeout now rate-shops Getcho against parcel for every local order, and every shipment goes out at the lowest quoted rate. Together we optimize batched pickups (pick up five orders and deliver each on the same route) and work fulfillment around their in-house inventory replenishment. Closeout’s own driver now uses the Getcho app, so ETAs are known and store-to-store transfers are tracked automatically.

Still, Closeout leadership wished there were Getcho-esque options for non-local markets, especially Florida, California and Texas, where many of their customers live. They found themselves losing money on big orders. Zone 8 parcel rates on heavy, oversized cartons aren’t cheap.

Regional Carriers and Parsel

There are, in fact, cheaper delivery options for long-haul big-and-bulky: the regional carriers.

Some regional carriers come from companies you already know. DashLink is DoorDash’s parcel network, and it powers some Getcho customers already. Logistics pros will recognize OnTrac, Veho and UniUni. And then there are lesser-known but impressive companies like GoFo, ShipX and BetterTrucks.

Compared to the national carriers (USPS, UPS and FedEx), the regionals usually offer a better price by specializing in a particular niche: last-mile delivery in select zip codes. The trade-off is access. There are no Veho or GoFo stores where you can drop off packages; you need a way to haul your parcels into their delivery network, and most regionals only offer truckload pickups from high-volume fulfillment centers. Regional coverage is also never complete. Depending on the carrier, you might reach anywhere from half to three-quarters of your customers, so you’ll still depend on USPS, UPS and FedEx for some of your volume.

Enter Parsel. Parsel is a logistics company that provides access to a suite of regional carriers on a single blended rate card. Parsel has also built a network of sort centers where shippers can drop pallets of mixed regional packages; Parsel sorts them and injects them into each regional network. Their volume across the regional networks means Parsel customers get rates that would otherwise require enterprise-scale shipping, without worrying about any logistics beyond printing labels.

Parsel is a longtime Getcho partner. Parsel taps Getcho’s first-mile network for sort center transport and carrier monitoring. And now, Parsel offers the regional carriers to Getcho customers.

The Solution: Shipping From The Closeout Connection Today

Today, every order from The Closeout Connection gets quoted across the full menu:

1. Local couriers on the Getcho network, for orders within 15 miles of a store
2. The national carriers: USPS, UPS and FedEx
3. The regional carriers, through Parsel’s blended rate card

Each order ships at the best available rate. Getcho and Parsel run daily pickups from Closeout’s warehouse to the Parsel sort center, so reaching the regional networks takes nothing more than printing a label.

Since partnering with Getcho, The Closeout Connection has cut its total shipping spend by 25%. The experience got better as the costs came down: customers see unified tracking on every order and sharper, more accurate shipping rates at checkout.

Not a single one of The Closeout Connection’s SKUs loses money on shipping anymore.

Retailers use Getcho to quote every order across couriers, parcel and regional carriers from one Shopify integration, so the cheapest option wins without anyone comparing rates by hand.

Key Takeaways

• Courier beats parcel more often than you’d think for big-and-bulky. Within a local radius, a courier on the Getcho network is frequently cheaper than a dimensional-weight parcel rate, so rate-shop every local order rather than defaulting to a carrier.
• Regional carriers are the answer to zone 8 losses, but they need volume and a way into their network. Parsel’s blended rate card and sort centers give a five-store retailer enterprise-scale regional rates with nothing more than a label.
• One quote across couriers, national and regional carriers cut The Closeout Connection’s total shipping spend 25% and eliminated money-losing SKUs.
• Lower cost didn’t mean a worse experience. Unified tracking on every order and more accurate checkout rates came along with the savings.
• In-house drivers fit in the same system. Closeout’s own driver runs on the Getcho app, so store transfers and local drops get the same ETAs and tracking as third-party couriers.