Cahoot Fulfillment

Great product, saves a lot of time printing labels. Highly recommend for anyone looking to spend less time printing labels.

In-Depth Analysis of Cahoot.ai

Pros:

-Speed of Implementation: Cahoot.ai can be quickly integrated into your operations, potentially reducing the time to start utilizing their fulfillment network.

-Valid Tracking Rate: The tracking rate is generally reliable, ensuring your customers receive accurate shipment updates.

-Network Proximity to Customers: The distributed network can place your products closer to customers, potentially reducing delivery times if you can manage the logistical complexity of constant replenishment.

-Label Automation: Automating label creation can save time and reduce manual errors in the shipping process.
Commitment to improving: Cahoot.ai does appear to have a goal of creating and improving their service offerings.

Cons and Their Perils:

No Control Over SFP Program Metrics:

Peril: The sales pitch of Cahoot’s command of SFP fulfillment, can contrast with Amazon’s program eligibility - which is independent of Cahoot. This distinction leads to false expectations that a contract with Cahoot is your gateway into the SFP Prime program. Even with excellent fulfillment performance, achieving and maintaining a 93.5% on-time delivery rate, controlled by independent carriers (UPS, USPS) failed for this writer’s company despite a total order volume of over 1000 orders shipped. This lack of control means committing to and investing in Cahoot.ai as an SFP solution might tie you into a particular contract that fails to deliver the benefits of SFP, potentially wasting valuable resources and time without gaining the competitive advantage of the Prime badge.

Reluctant Initial Consulting:

Peril: Small businesses requiring more hands-on guidance may find the consulting support insufficient after the initial onboarding. This reluctance can lead to misunderstandings of the program's intricacies or operations, resulting in implementation errors and inefficiencies that can affect overall business performance, health, and customer satisfaction, as well as straining the relationship between parties.

Negative Weekly Cash Flow:

Peril: Paying advance shipping deposits weekly can strain your cash flow significantly, especially if your sales cycle and receivables won’t align with these outflows (notably for Amazon Sellers). This negative cash flow can cripple small businesses, forcing them to either seek additional funding or risk insolvency.

Exclusive Use of Cahoot’s Shipping Rates:

Peril: Locking into Cahoot’s shipping rates for a specific period can prevent you from leveraging potentially cheaper or more favorable rates from other providers, increasing your overall shipping costs and reducing profitability.

Handling and Box Fees:

Peril: Additional fees for handling (fulfillment) and external boxes can potentially double your shipping costs, especially if those boxes that fit your items are not standard boxes being stocked. These fees erode margins, particularly for businesses with tight profit structures, making it harder to compete on price or invest in growth.

No Net Cost Savings:

Peril: Instead of saving costs, Cahoot’s service fees are added back into your cost of goods sold (COGS), negating the perceived financial benefits. This hidden cost structure can mislead businesses into thinking they are saving money when, in fact, their operating expenses remain unchanged or increase.

High Margins Required:

Peril: Cahoot’s model demands high margins to absorb the additional costs of outsourcing fulfillment. Low-margin businesses will struggle to remain viable under this model, as the added expenses can quickly erode already thin profit margins.

Significant Cash Reserves Needed:

Peril: The necessity for substantial upfront cash reserves to cover deposits and ongoing costs means only businesses with strong cash positions can participate. This requirement excludes smaller, less financially robust businesses and adds significant financial risk for those that do.

Increased Time and Effort:

Peril: The additional time required to manage maintenance issues and the overall fulfillment process can divert resources from other critical areas of your business, such as operations, sales, and customer service, leading to potential declines in overall business performance.

Immature Software:

Peril: While improvements can be rolled out, an immature software platform can lead to operational inefficiencies, errors, and unexpected downtime. Relying on such a system can disrupt your fulfillment process, leading to customer dissatisfaction and potential loss of business.

Untimely Communication:

Peril: Decisions that affect your operations, such as suspension, in our experience are sudden and without warning. These types of issues not being communicated timely, can lead to poor planning and reaction times, as well as jeopardize the health of your business on platforms like Amazon where you can have hundreds of orders that are due to ship completely fail to be processed, leaving you with a greater than 4% Late Order Rate. This lack of transparency can cause operational disruptions, missed deadlines, dissatisfied and ultimately, account suspensions. Particularly in the event that Cahoot decides to suspend fulfillment operations because of contractual issues.

Non-Refundable EFTs:

Peril: If there are Non-refundable electronic fund transfers, it means that even in cases of disputes or service dissatisfaction, you may not recoup your funds. This policy in practice increases financial risk, making it harder to manage cash flow and recover from unexpected issues.

Conclusion:

Cahoot.ai’s shortcomings pose significant risks, especially for small and low-margin businesses, especially in exchange for contracted services. The lack of control over SFP metrics, coupled with substantial upfront costs, handling fees, and negative cash flow, can strain financial resources and operational efficiency. The potential for miscommunication and immature software further exacerbates these issues, making Cahoot.ai a high-risk option for businesses without strong cash reserves and high margins. Careful consideration and thorough understanding of these risks are essential before committing to their services.

This is a real customer review and is aimed at helping others make an informed decision before deciding to proceed with this company.

Excellent service - From easy onboarding to correct and FAST shipping and perfect inventory control.... Very happy with CAHOOT.
Highly recommended

Cahoot Fulfillment has made our warehouse so much more efficient. It has allowed us to direct our packers at the time of packing the specific box size we want them to use for each item and it has allowed our supervisors to actually supervise the packing process. Prior to Cahoot, our supervisors were pretty much chained to the label printing stations making sure that each package was shipped according to our standards (like no Ground Advantage for packages over 1 lb, etc.). Now, our supervisors are actually able to move amongst the packers and ensure the packing process is moving as expected. We have been able to reduce our staff by 1 supervisor and 1 packer saving us a significant amount of money. Additionally, it has freed our team up to handle more tasks like keeping the warehouse clean and doing more inventory counts.

Whenever we have encountered an issue or need the system to handle something differently for us, the support team excellent. They are responsive and either make a quick fix or they instruct us on how to best handle the issue. In fact, the support is so wonderful we are looking to expand our relationship and utilize a sister product of theirs.

Finally, Cahoot is user friendly. There are of course loads of videos and instructions available online, but I find that it's simply easy to locate what I need without using those tools. It's simply intuitive and everyone on the team enjoys using it. I've found that when I've gone to share something I've found with another on the team, they've actually already found that same thing because it's simply easy.

You will not be disappointed with Cahoot!

The Cahoot customer experience is great! We were able to submit work orders and manage our inventory with ease. Whenever we had questions, the Cahoot team responded quickly. We were able to make sure our customers had a great experience by ensuring that the products arrived to them quickly and without any damages.

We onboarded with Cahoot 4 months ago (at the beginning of Q4) with the single goal of reducing our 3PL costs. We have been happy to see considerable savings on SPD costs instantly. What I was not expecting was the excellent level of service from the Cahoot team. They took care to analyze our business in detail before we onboarded so they were certain they could fulfill their promise of service and cost.

The onboarding process was extremely easy. The Cahoot team did all the heavy lifting and the Cahoot platform is simple and easy to use. Working with Cahoot provides us with the flexibility to store product near our customers. The team continue to work with us to ensure we distribute our inventory to the right locations across the US to reduce our SPD label costs.

Rather than buying an app or a service, it feels like we have begun a great partnership with the Cahoot team who have a genuine interest in helping our business to succeed.

Cahoot does a great job with our storage and shipping. The connection to our shopify account was easy and they process orders super fast. Their support team is super responsive and Jeremy specifically on the account management team has been super helpful. We're new to Shopify and 3PL so his help has been great as we've started.

Can't say enough good things about Cahoot.ai!

I am a CFP (Cahoot Fulfillment Partner), so my warehouse and staff fulfill orders for Cahoot sellers.

Over the last four years, I’ve had the opportunity to work with many of the features of Cahoot.ai and I must say that it has completely changed my view of order processing! The platform is definitely for me and for those looking for the ability to fulfill orders without the warehousing, labor and all the additional costs associated with fulfilling online orders. They have a network of hundreds of warehouses across the country, so they are easily able to reduce transit time and shipping label costs by relaying orders to the warehouse closest to the buyer.

As I started using Cahoot.ai, I was blown away by its easy interface and user-friendly functionality. It's clear that the developers put a lot of thought into creating a solution that enables seamless communication, efficient teamwork, and easy / cost-effective order fulfillment. The platform that Cahoot.ai provides for both CFPs and merchants is nothing short of amazing. Merchants can track shipments, monitor inventory levels, and identify potential shortages in real time, allowing them to proactively address issues and keep customers informed. This level of transparency greatly improves customer relationships and creates confidence that buyer needs can be consistently met.

 
The tools set up for me as a CFP enable myself and my staff to expedite hundreds of orders per day, with scanning and verification components ensuring that every order is the right product, quantity, and packaging. Shipping costs are reduced for sellers and buyers' complaints are reduced because orders are guaranteed to be shipped on time and at the lowest price. We are very pleased to continue working with Cahoot.ai and look forward to many years of continued cooperation.

Cahoot allows my company to stock unused warehouse space so that every inch of my property is producing income. I'm also able to ensure ever member of my staff is working full time by filling void hours of workers with Cahoot.ai projects.

For our Amazon FBM business, we like the fact that Cahoot integrates with Amazon SellerCentral very seamlessly, including reacting accordingly to canceled orders, making the FBM side smoother than ever. Jeremy, our account manager, is very professional and helpful. With one of our troublesome SKUs he even offered creative solutions to save us money going forward. Their fulfillment on-time rate is 95%, which is nice and we got the Amazon Prime badge for it. Highly recommended!

Cahoot has been a life saver for our business. We needed a partner that allowed us to ship faster, have shipping labels created automatically, and control our shipping costs. We could find other products that did one or two items well, but they never did the entire package and at the same time continue to be affordable.

With Cahoot we are able pick, pack and ship so much faster. We were routinely rushing until 6pm to get orders out, but we're now done most days by 4pm and that leaves us a 1-hour break to clean up and ensure everything is completed successfully. Our shipping supervisors are actually able to supervise the entire process rather than just the shipping label process, which will make our entire team more efficient. As a result, we've changed our team's hours and they get out of work earlier and we are getting more done than just taking care of orders (cleaning, maintenance, etc.). The best part - we've been able to reduce our numbers by 2 employees.

The ability to make sure that team members know what boxes to use is also invaluable. We are able to maintain inventory of boxes which means we know when to order more and can better budget for this cost. It also means that all team members are using the same box for items and it's the most cost effective box.

Additionally, the Cahoot team is amazing to work with. They are organized and have the training expertly set up. They are responsive and always helpful. I look forward to seeing what they come up with next because I know it will be great. I also appreciate their knowledge in the industry and their understanding and leadership on what it takes to meet all the ecommerce and marketplace requirements.

Cahoot will not dissapoint you!