How Consumer Electronics Brand, Skylight Avoids Backlogs During Peak Season

Skylight is a quickly growing consumer electronics brand, with products that are in high demand during the winter holidays. They rely on DCL Logistics to scale up to meet their big sales volume during November and December.

Michael Segal, Skylight CEO and Founder says, “scaling up for peak season is not easy. It requires a great deal of careful communication and planning—DCL is a great partner to plan with. DCL doesn’t operate like a large corporate 3PL with an inflexible standardized system, they offer customization and a level of boutique help that provides us with the perfect amount of support—it’s a Goldilocks value proposition for us.”

Ecommerce Case Study: Skylight

• Problem: Skylight needed a 3PL who could manage scaling up for peak season, but also scaling down for slower times of the year.
• Solution: DCL’s decades of experience with consumer electronics and hardware products means they are always prepared to meet consumer demand when it happens, even if that’s not when predicted.
• Result: Skylight is able to fulfill products to customers quickly during their biggest sales season of the year, and still maintain fast fulfillment when there aren’t as many orders coming in.

Handling Peak Season Spikes and Dips

Getting peak season fulfillment perfect is imperative for Skylight. It requires the ability to both scale up and down quickly. 

Skylight’s wifi-connected digital displays make excellent gifts—they make a synced calendar and scheduling portal for families, and an easy-to-use digital photo frame. Like most consumer electronics brands, the winter holidays are the most important time of year for Skylight to maximize sales. Consumers purchase a majority of their gifts between Black Friday and Christmas every year.

To capture big sales volumes each peak season, Skylight leans on DCL to help them scale up to meet demand. Michael says, “There’s always going to be challenges but fundamentally with DCL we have always been able to scale for peak season, without massive backlogs.” 

Like many growing hardware companies, Skylight also needs support to efficiently manage scaling down. There are many times when brands expect a big surge in volume, but consumer behaviors dictate a different outcome.

DCL did a great job kind of rolling with it when our sales materialized about a week after we thought they would—there was zero problem in accommodating that and I think it’s because they don’t operate like a rigid multinational corporation.

The Value-Adds That Increase Average Order Value

Like many premium hardware companies, Skylight was looking for creative ways to boost sales.  Bundling is an excellent way to increase average order value, especially during the holiday sales rush.

Creating bundles is difficult operationally and it’s a value-added service that not all 3PLs provide. DCL’s virtual bundling tool gives Skylight a simple tool that allows them to quickly create bundles which gives customers more purchase incentives. Virtual bundles can be created in near real-time to provide Skylight with more control and eliminate the need to pre-kit bundles which can be costly and requires weeks and even months of planning.

Chia explains, “We have been testing various versions of product bundles, and the set-up of these virtual bundles has been incredibly nimble to allow us to test and send them out quickly. I think we came up with the idea, and it was only a month later that we had fulfilled it into customers hands.”

Expanding to Omnichannel to Get Products in Front of Customers

Skylight is growing rapidly. Michael explains, “We are scaling in several different ways. We’re expanding our product assortment, we’re expanding to new countries, and we’re expanding into omnichannel, including retail. We believe that Skylight has the opportunity to be a generational brand.”

DCL’s experience with omnichannel fulfillment is what directly supports Skylight’s expansion and scaling strategy. With years of integrations with big retail outlets, the DCL team is able to connect brands like Skylight to the sales channels where they can net more customers. 

Chia says, “We’re trying to be where the customer is, so our reach is important. Being able to ship from multiple locations is important—it makes it possible to access all of our customers within two to three days. DCL’s national footprint plus international partnerships helps enable further growth.”

About Skylight

The Skylight suite of products are designed to connect the digital and non-digital worlds, and to bring together families that might be many miles apart. Born out of a desire to share photos and memories with family members and loved ones far away, Skylight is one of the first of its kind.

The Skylight brand is expanding and their team is growing—and hiring! They believe Skylight will change the way families and friends share moments. They’re looking for excellent people to join the Skylight team.