Common Era

A lot of jewelry companies are very old-school, even those selling online. When I started Common Era, I knew that I wanted the company to run like the software companies I’d worked at: efficient, easy to buy from, built to scale, with a great experience end-to-end.

As a one-woman team, to achieve that, my plan from the start was to outsource as much as possible, especially fulfillment.

When I began looking for a partner, I remember reading a lot of reviews. ShipBob seemed most promising, but a lot of people said that they would send the wrong products, or that they had trouble getting support. Because it was one of the newer-looking options out there, I still decided to try them out, along with a similar service called ShipHero. ShipBob was frustrating out of the gate as far as service went—they wouldn’t help me with setup like I had hoped, and I feared how the support relationship would look down the line. And with ShipHero, the software was complex and buggy, which didn’t inspire confidence. I finally decided to fulfill orders on my own for a month because I hadn’t found a partner I was comfortable with in time for launch.

It was then that I came across Airhouse and decided to give it a go.

From the moment I signed, onboarding with Airhouse was amazing. After trying out other services, I launched the business on November 30, kicked off with Airhouse mid-December, and products were stocked and shipping two weeks later, by January 1. It was particularly surprising given we were getting started over the holiday peak, and a relief, given I was traveling out of the country in early January and wanted to have everything up and running.

About a month or so in, products had been shipping, but we hit a rough patch: order processing slowed, and inventory had some inaccuracies. Once the team noticed the issue, they switched us into a new warehouse in the Airhouse network that would be a better fit. The transition was super easy—I didn’t have to lift a finger as they relocated my products for me. Orders started shipping from the new warehouse, and since then, fulfillment has been smooth.

Even with the hiccup, the experience overall is amazing, and having an Account Manager is delightful. I know who I’m speaking to each time and feel like we’re on the same page. That said, it’s rare that I need help in the first place. The product is also always improving—every time I think “oh, I wish they had this feature,” it comes out. The team has even recommended plugins for things Airhouse doesn’t do, which has saved me so many hours searching and making sure it works with a warehouse.

With Airhouse I have peace of mind, and shipping is something that I don’t even think about. When you’re running a small business you’re thinking about capital, inventory, quality control, ecommerce conversion rate, things like that—you really don’t want to be worried about calculating shipping dimensions and the latest surcharges. Airhouse frees me up to do those mission-critical tasks.