Animalhouse Fitness makes high-quality, innovative fitness equipment for home and gym use, built around a mission to remove the barriers that keep people from reaching their wellness goals.
Animalhouse Fitness started its cross-border journey early, in 2021, with a deliberately narrow product line built for strategic growth rather than a wide catalog. Having outgrown its initial US warehouse, they partnered with ShipBob to build a fulfillment network. "The Founders figured out that we wanted to go more places. We want to expand," said Camy Raissian, Head of Operations at Animalhouse Fitness. But expanding fulfillment abroad is a real investment, and there was no clear signal yet on where to invest first.
Through the ShipBob partnership, Animalhouse Fitness gained access to FlavorCloud's guaranteed Delivered Duty Paid (DDP) shipping, opening guaranteed checkout to international customers for the first time. The market data that came back showed Animalhouse Fitness precisely where international demand existed, market by market.
“The biggest benefit of FlavorCloud we've found, other than the extra sales associated with getting DDP and exposing the product to other people throughout the world, is it helped us really quickly see where we are actually selling outside the US.”Camy Raissian
Head of Operations, Animalhouse Fitness
That data pointed the way to Canada first. Founders Evan Gubera and Paul Jackson, alongside Raissian, saw the demand and acted: pairing FlavorCloud's market data with ShipBob's fulfillment network, Animalhouse expanded into Canada in May 2022. "It eliminates the ambiguity of what do we want to do next," Raissian said. "It's just a question of at what point do we stop?"
The playbook repeated as the data grew. By 2023, DDP orders were arriving from 45 countries, and that same market data pointed next to the UK, then Australia in May 2024. "The sales have always been there, and following our expansion into Canada and the UK, we began to explore opportunities in the Australian market utilizing FlavorCloud data," Raissian said. "FlavorCloud gives us a lot of insight into new markets and allows us to make decisions like this with much more confidence."
Even with an indirect relationship through the ShipBob integration, Animalhouse Fitness got a dedicated FlavorCloud account manager and support reliable enough to fade into the background. "I don't even recall the last time we had a phone call about problems with FlavorCloud DDP shipments," Raissian said. "Whatever arrangement has been made by FlavorCloud, whatever carriers are being used, whatever clearances are happening are smooth enough and fast enough that we don't have to think about it. Which is exactly what we want."
Animalhouse Fitness is monitoring how its new Australian fulfillment center performs, while continuing to use the same FlavorCloud data that guided the Canada, UK, and Australia expansions to decide where to go from here. The ShipBob partnership remains the foundation, but the decisions keep getting sharper with every new market.