In the second installment of our two-part series, we sat down with William Schumacher,
Uprising’s Founder and CEO, to share why Uprising made the switch from Shipstation to PDQ.
We dive deep into a range of topics including:
- Why seamless delivery and fulfillment are crucial for brands to get right
- How PDQ automated away the manual labor that ShipStation requires
- Building towards a future of Amazon-esque shipping alongside PDQ
“To some degree, I would characterize PDQ as what ShipStation wishes it could be, but PDQ is so improved, so modernized, that the comparison feels unfair.”
Early Days: ShipStation’s Frustrating Complexity
Uprising worked with ShipStation before finding out about PDQ. They felt cornered by a lack of fulfillment choices; working with ShipStation was more like settling for them.
ShipStation’s slow, complex process bogged down Uprising. Every aspect of fulfillment took an exorbitant amount of time, especially if an order went beyond out-of-the-box basics.
Prep work for ShipStation reached points where it was a full-time role; people had to wake up at all hours of the morning to complete grunt work.
William and his employees felt that someone could automate this prep work away to simplify and eliminate the unnecessary labor going into ShipStation’s process.
Put simply, ShipStation’s tools felt clunky and antiquated. The design of their tools was that of a past age in the tech world. Uprising grew tired of dealing with ShipStation’s issues and limitations.
PDQ to the Rescue
PDQ reached out to Uprising and laid out their vision of how they, PDQ, could help a fast-growing Shopify merchant like Uprising.
Their system was swift and organized from day one. PDQ automated many manual, frustrating aspects of ShipStation and continues improving its product.
In William’s words: “Before PrettyDamnQuick I was fulfilling and shipping with Shipstation using dozens of disjointed processes and manual workflows. What took me over 3 hours with Shipstation gets done in 30 minutes with PrettyDamnQuick.”
PDQ’s product and the hands-on nature of the PDQ team save Uprising time and money in the efficiency of their operation, helped by the mechanisms in place to catch mistakes early.
“We knew that tech could massively simplify, automate and eliminate a lot of the mess in the ShipStation world; PDQ made that and more happen.”
Discovering the Magic of PDQ: Uprising’s Missing Piece
Previously, using ShipStation required exorbitant amounts of prep time.
Due to ShipStation’s process, Uprising had to break up their prep work into multiple pieces, with teams doing buckets of work throughout the week to ensure they were ready come Monday.
Uprising only ships one day per week, yet they had a week-long process of piecing together small bits of the ShipStation puzzle.
Fast forward to the PDQ world, and the entire shipping process happens on Monday.
None of the pre-work has to happen anymore. PDQ takes care of all of those steps when it’s time to ship. They cut down prep time into a few hours on Uprising’s shipping day.
According to William, “PDQ gives me the confidence to scale and grow sales without worry. I'm delivering in less time with lower costs with no mistakes. I love the product and the team – and my customers are thrilled.”
This improvement comes down to the efficiency of PDQ’s systems and their team’s belief that their customer’s time is valuable. William points out that the PDQ team strives to keep improving their product and don’t want a single task to take their customers 5 minutes more than it should.
“PDQ takes our time personally. At every touchpoint with our team at Uprising, they want to over-deliver on my expectations and keep driving improvements.”
PDQ’s Course Correction
In comparison to ShipStation’s clunky flow of orders to batches, William and his team at Uprising appreciates PDQ’s simple and sequential four-step design: verify, assign, fulfill, track.
ShipStation’s process went: create batches, verify, start assigning, complete batches, and start tracking. Going back and forth between the steps was unintuitive and unnatural.
Unfortunately, that’s how ShipStation built its tool, so Uprising had to go along with it. PDQ improved the flow of the tool to match how people actually get the job done.
PDQ’s tool works with real people and cuts down frustration. That’s in line with PDQ’s company ethos; they’re making tools to help their customers, not tools that users have to adapt to.
“ShipStation’s endless back and forth in the flow of delivery logistics just isn’t ideal from a time investment lens. With PDQ, that flow is seamless and fluid.”
Building Towards a Future of Amazon-Esque Shipping
PDQ is a distinctly modern platform in a field of antiquated, uncomfortable options like ShipStation. Beyond that, PDQ’s current innovation begets a bright future.
William’s excited for PDQ’s trajectory. PDQ’s vision is to help the Shopify merchant simplify logistics, automate when possible, and use tech in groundbreaking ways. PDQ aims to provide Amazon-like tools, which is precisely what independent eCommerce merchants want.
Such companies went to Shopify in the first place because of the vibe to arm the rebels and compete with Amazon, but they need great tools to have a fighting chance.
PDQ is building those tools and capabilities through tech, customer experience, and efficient business cycles.
“I’ll do anything to elevate our game 10X and compete with the best of the best, so I’m all about PDQ bringing the magic to Uprising and other merchants.”
