Client
Four prestige beauty brands within the Market Defense portfolio, spanning fragrance, skincare, hair care, and beauty accessory categories.
Business Challenge
Market Defense holds every brand to the same fulfillment standard: speed, cost-efficiency, and minimal environmental impact. Four brands fell short of that standard. Inventory was moving through centralized warehouses before reaching Amazon FBA, adding weeks of unnecessary lead time and freight. Beauty-specific compliance requirements, including fragile packaging, liquids, kits, and bundles, were creating receiving delays when local partners lacked FBA expertise. There was no visibility into how the fulfillment network’s design was affecting promotional readiness, launch windows, or carbon footprint.
Goal
Equip brands seeking to reduce their carbon footprint, but lacking the Amazon FBA expertise to execute on it, with the process and infrastructure to do so without sacrificing speed or cost-efficiency.
"
“Crushing it. Great job team! I continue to be impressed by what this group is capable of.”
Approach
Market Defense redesigned the fulfillment flow around proximity, mapping where inventory originated to build the most efficient Amazon-ready path for each geography. Existing 3PLs were integrated, or the closest qualified regional partner was identified, and the full FBA enablement framework was transferred: shipment creation, labeling, carton and pallet compliance, barcode handling, prep standards, and beauty-specific requirements.
Results
A scalable, proximity-based network improved speed, reduced freight, and cut carbon without depending on a single warehouse or a one-off workaround.
- 2% lead-time reduction, from a 2 to 4 week turnaround down to one day
- 5% reduction in freight-movement intensity over the stabilized operating period
- 9 metric tonnes of CO2e avoided, with an annualized run-rate of 40.4 metric tonnes
- 433K+ units processed post-switch, across all four brands
- 17,464 truck-miles avoided
By brand:
- Brand A processed 255,252 units with a 24.8% reduction
- Brand B processed 125,469 units with a 44.7% reduction
- Brand C processed 39,776 units with an 11.0% reduction
- Brand D processed 12,558 units with a 47.2% reduction.
- All four brands achieved same-week readiness, with one-day turnaround in the fastest lanes.
Note: the fulfillment switch was implemented in March 2025, with results measured over the May through December 2025 stabilized operating period.
