Watch: How Chagrinovations Is Serving All of Its Retail Channels

A case study with Dan Perella, chief executive officer and investor at Chagrinovations as well as co-founder and managing director of Brands to Retail (BTR), and Chris James, senior director of fulfillment operations at Fulfilled by Staples. 

Perella descrives Chagrinovations as “a problem solver for the retail customer,” supporting a variety of innovative consumer brands. About four years ago, the company was “fired” by its third-party logistics provider “because we were too small.” Fulfilled by Staples then stepped in to support the growing enterprise.

The choice of Staples didn’t require a formal request for proposals, Perella says. He had already been doing business with the provider, and “connected with the right people at the right time.”

James says Fulfilled by Staples had an established direct-to-consumer offering drawing on its coast-to-coast network of fulfillment centers. “We were built for their flexible requirements,” he adds, and well-positioned to grow with the customer.

Brands to Retail, Perella’s other business, was more developed, with up to 6,000 pallet locations. It, too, was easily moved into the Staples supply chain network, he says.

Implementations begin by determining exactly what problem the customer is trying to solve, James says. Chief among the challenges with Chagrinovations was serving an organization that also has a business-to-business component. Perella adds that he experienced “none of the sterotypical problems” of implementation that come with a shift in warehouse networks.

Perella says the setup with Fulfilled by Staples is “eminently scalable,” with the ability to handle hard goods, hazardous materials and many different types of environments.

“What it’s done,” he says, “is given us superpowers with our customers,” whether they’re buying in-store, online, or shipping to store. In addition, the Fulfilled by Staples model gives Chagrinovations and BTR plenty of room to grow. “We’re not limited by any infrastructure slowdown [that would] throttle our growth,” he says.