Malla

Feeling that the traditional approach to medicine was too reactive, Morris sought to amplify a more proactive approach that prioritized healthy living through functional medicine. So, he left his finance career and Malla was born. 

Malla is a direct-to-consumer brand with both a retail arm that supplies supplements and a service arm that connects users with practitioners and personalized health plans, addressing a variety of symptoms, including everything from chronic headaches to anxiety, by looking at their root causes. It’s a complex business in which fulfillment is a seemingly small but critical component that Morris had no prior exposure to. 

“Because I really wanted to focus on the membership side, on building that product, I just needed someone who I could trust and hand off that part of the business to,” Morris said. “Like any other part of the business, I know there’s going to be a learning curve, and then I try to hire folks that can help me speed up the learning curve.”

Morris said he chose to partner with Airhouse for three key reasons: 

1. He needed the kind of hands-on logistics management Airhouse offers so he could fully outsource fulfillment—not just the warehouse labor—and focus on his brand.
2. The Airhouse platform is “super easy” to use.
3. Airhouse offered competitive rates in addition to dedicated support. 

“It just felt a lot more human, and I knew I would need that as we’re not 100% focused on just shipping products.”

As he prepared to launch sales, Morris worked closely with his account manager Martin to connect Airhouse to his online store and subscription management software, set up Malla’s fulfillment SOPs, properly implement a SKU swap for repeat orders, and proactively correct a kitting mistake at the warehouse before orders were sent to customers. 

“On the fulfillment side, I was like, ‘Yeah whatever—you have your products and you ship them out.’ What can be so difficult? What I’ve learned, though, is that there are a ton of these little nuances that are really interesting. Martin’s really taken the time to educate me on them, which has been great,” Morris said.

With the time he’s saved by outsourcing to Airhouse, Morris has been able to focus on growing the Malla brand through direct-response marketing, launching influencer campaigns, and collecting customer feedback to improve his product-market fit. Over the next year, he said he’s focused on proving his membership model and making strides toward his ultimate mission of promoting access to functional medicine. 

“We didn't start a functional medicine company to focus on fulfillment, we’re doing it to create a world where everyone can access holistic, root cause-focused care,” Morris said. “So if Airhouse can continue to enable that and let us focus on the business we’re hoping to build, that’s the exact type of partner we want to have.”