Re-Shoring & Consolidation
The Ask: Customer came to us needing to return their extruded squeeze tube logistics and manufacturing to the USA as they had 100% spend out of China. Current product portfolio ranged from smaller fill sizes for lip care, mid-size for skin care as well as larger fill sizes for shampoo & conditioners.
The Opportunity: Along side tariffs and shipment/high air freight concerns, perceived smaller quantities and highly customized tube head styles and tube closures — the customer needed to solidify a stronger, more consistent supply chain with reasonable, predictable lead times as their brands were growing quickly.
SkyQ’s Partnership: We reviewed the customers current specs, categorized current caps and tube head styles with marketing/design into must keep and willing to review options as well as understood their current and potential co-man filling locations. Immediately made the customer aware a larger consolidation of their 24 head styles & applicators/cap combinations across 9 tube diameters would absolutely be required if sourced from North America and reached out to various tube manufacturers for sampling to provide real out of the box, stock options for them to consider.
Solution: SkyQ provided a solution to consolidate down to 5 tube diameters and 7 total tube head/cap combinations all made within the USA across 2 tube manufacturers with the exception of 1 lip application solution came out of Mexico as well as a non-negotiable custom closure that had to remain manufactured in China — we helped support and negotiate a cap inventory program at the tube manufacturer to support their custom closure requirement. Alongside providing a vastly now US-based tube/cap supply chain and value-add consolidation of tube designs
Lead times were now consistently 6-8 weeks or less across all their SKUs for decorated/capped tubes
Response time & Quality of tubes & caps and deco application were vastly improved - no longer short shipping retailers
Revenue Generation - Space for inventory out of China was consolidated to non-existent and middle-man distributor required for the complex China supply chain was removed. No more requirements for air freight and tubes were not on the water/sitting at ports for 4+ weeks.
Consolidation and simplfying of tube head styles/caps/diameters led to larger PO quantities requiring minimal changeovers for deco or cap colors only — creating production efficiencies and greater buying power!
Plans to place even more products into tubed products began to come into focus for the company execs for new brand launches when previously their vibe was “do we have to?!”— now having a domestic collaborative back & forth during regular business hours provided unforeseen learning and growth at the Company from a design and marketing standpoint.
Extruded Tube project(s) have your operations or sourcing teams perplexed, avoiding them at all costs or even downright irritable due to the complexity?! Reach out to us today … we are your best solution to bridge the knowledge gap today and will drive value-add and efficiencies throughout the entire project life cycle!
