Fashion
Armadillo Merino
Shooting for the stars: automating Shopify to supply NASA.
Armadillo Merino was founded in 2011 with a remarkable ambition – to save the lives of soldiers by changing the clothes they wear. Today, the company supplies high-performance, next-to-skin garments to military and special forces, search and rescue teams, and even explorers and astronauts.
Andy Caughey, Co-founder said, “When you start a business, you need to make sure you’ve got a clearly differentiated offering. We needed something very compelling versus all of the other generic products out there.”
Having trust in your fulfilment partner is a must, when – like Armadillo – you’re dealing with customers such as NASA.
Andy Caughey,
Co-founder
The Challenge
To become an important partner in Armadillo Merino’s global strategy (and meet extremely urgent and ongoing NASA requests for multiple sizes and styles of merino garments).
What we created
We created a seamless onboarding experience and proved the efficacy of our integration with eCommerce platforms. Andy said, “J&J was the first warehouse we approached back in 2011. We integrated right from the get go and it’s removed so much complexity. The whole eCommerce integration was simple and straightforward – it means we can automate our Shopify and Amazon stores.”
What we delivered
J&J gave the reliability that NASA – and Armadillo Merino – demands.
Andy said, “We’ve been working with NASA for around four years, supplying garments to astronauts on the International Space Station and for ground-based research.
Recently, we had an urgent order for 22 different size and style garments. We had to get the garments from the UK to the US, through customs and our distributor there, and out to NASA in Houston in less than five working days. J&J was able to deliver.”
While Armadillo ships its largest bulk orders directly to B2B customers, J&J handles its B2C eCommerce orders and smaller B2B orders for sampling and trialling.
“An order goes through and we know that 99% of the time, it’ll be dispatched that day and arrive tomorrow.”
While continuing to build its B2B business, Armadillo plans to grow its B2C sales globally, reaching new customers in new countries, by offering them a safer, more comfortable alternative to synthetic fabrics.
“We’re building an international brand with a reputation for high-performance garments that solve health and wellbeing issues. We see J&J as an important partner in this global marketing strategy.”