Tiger Tail USA Flexes Its Supply Chain

Founded in 2006 by a serial entrepreneur, Tiger Tail USA manufactures and distributes muscle self- recovery products and develops corporate wellness muscle care programs. After nearly a decade in business, Tiger Tail’s growth had reached an inflection point and it chose NetSuite as its first-ever true ERP. A Pacejet implementation soon followed, to manage shipping operations.

Tiger Tail’s products were developed with a single goal in mind: Prevent minor muscle aches and pains from devolving into debilitating problems. The company has applied that philosophy to its own growth as well, specifically in terms of its fulfillment operations. With its new software package in place, warehouse bottlenecks began to vanish – orders that previously required up to 20 minutes to pack, label, and bill were now being done in five, thanks to Pacejet’s ability to complete all steps right on the warehouse floor.

Growing businesses also experience growing complexities. Two of Tiger Tail’s largest customer segments – large companies providing employee wellness programs and big box retailers – each brought a respective set of challenges.

Employers typically placed large orders (to support teams’ home health during COVID) with varied approaches to distribution. Some preferred pallet shipping, via LTL, of all products to a central location. Others had Tiger Tail drop shipping directly to employees’ homes via parcel. Pacejet was ideally situated to manage both types of shipping simultaneously, despite the differences in packing, billing, and securing capacity.

Steadily increasing orders from big box retailers, on the other hand, were quickly turning Tiger Tail into a true omnichannel powerhouse – as an integrated manufacturer, distributor, and retailer. Serving large retailers at scale requires additional technology to maintain retail compliance, typically in the form of Electronic Data Interchange (EDI). Fortunately, its chosen vendor, SPS Commerce, maintains robust integrations with NetSuite and Pacejet to make that compliance easy.

Perhaps most important to the Tiger Tail growth story are the ways in which new technology helped it maintain well-established commitments to employees and customers alike.

When the company shifted to its own manufacturing and distribution facilities, it brought over a team long familiar with the company and its products. That team also had established workflows that couldn’t be replicated without Pacejet, and providing that sense of continuity was important. Change is never easy but bringing a level of familiarity can improve productivity without burning teams out.

Customers, meanwhile, relied on Tiger Tail to always fulfill, with the promised products, on the promised schedule. Pacejet and NetSuite gave the company better inventory controls and forecasting guidance. Collectively, those ensured that Tiger Tail never sold a single product it didn’t have, nor would it find itself having to turn away orders over inaccurate predictions.

Tiger Tail’s innovative products, and tenacious team, were always going to succeed. Technology largely influenced the level of growth it achieved in the face of unprecedented, unanticipated, constraints. The company’s principles, and the foresight to acquire software it wouldn’t outgrow, gave it an edge in an otherwise challenging environment.