[Case Study] How The Zero Proof Powers 3.5x year-over-year Growth with Stord

Discover how The Zero Proof leverages Stord’s commerce enablement capability across physical fulfillment and integrated technology to maintain meteoric growth and unlock consumer experience at scale.

About The Zero Proof

America’s alcohol consumption is changing. While many still enjoy drinking, only between 18 to 20 percent of Americans of legal drinking age and under 28 years old said they drink regularly. In 2023 the non-alcoholic drinks market was valued at $1.3 trillion and is projected to exceed $2.9 trillion by 2035, and is the third-fastest growing category in US markets. This increase in demands appears to be driven by a focus on health and wellness and a changing consumer lifestyle, and it was this exact desire for a healthier lifestyle that led Sean and Trevor to found The Zero Proof.

Since 2019, The Zero Proof has provided customers eager for non-alcoholic alternative access to over 70 curated brands as well as its own private label offerings of Saint Viviana wine and Lapo’s Negroni. With a robust B2B and DTC business, The Zero Proof is poised to dominate the non alcoholic beverage market but found they needed a commerce enablement partner to help meet their customer demand.

The problem with rapid growth

Since inception, The Zero Proof managed every order inhouse putting extreme stress on their team to become fulfillment and customer service experts. Inventory was managed through an inflexible system not suited to their complex SKU requirements, making accurate picking and order management a laborious process. The Zero Proof also suffered from high parcel premiums, locked to a small number of carriers with limited ability to negotiate or expand carrier options.

This accelerated fervor for The Zero Proofs products across both B2B and DTC customers strained their packout process which caused high outbound damage and mispick rates. These inefficiencies and errors created time consuming support tickets, increased operational costs, and negatively impacted the consumer experience.

Unlocking premium consumer experience at scale

The Zero Proof needed to improve its order reliability, reduce support tickets, and accelerate daily fulfilled order volume quickly. With Stord, The Zero Proof was able to tap into a complete end-to-end consumer experience platform that would power all B2B and DTC orders with total visibility and accountability.

First, all products were moved to Stord’s headquarters in Atlanta, GA. Then all historical sales channels; including Amazon, KeHE and over 500+ small mom and pop shops (The Zero Proof’s entire wholesale business), were integrated with Stord’s order management system (OMS), Stord One Commerce. This instantly allowed The Zero Proof critical real-time order and inventory visibility.

Through Stord’s Omnichannel Fulfillment operations powered by Stord’s Warehouse Management System (WMS), Stord One Warehouse, The Zero Proof reduced expensive mispick error rates by over 85% and has seen a standard on time in full fulfillment rate of >99.8%. These improvements via data understanding is further enriched with Inventory Planning, which generates intelligent per-SKU demand forecasting based on The Zero Proof’s historical and projected sales and can even account for planned marketing initiatives.

Now, The Zero Proof’s end consumers enjoy their orders on time, without errors, and without a need to contact the brand aside from when they need to replenish their non-alcohol cabinet.

Achieving sustained growth with an integrated commerce enablement partner

These operational improvements from the in-cart experience through post-delivery has allowed The Zero Proof to continue expanding on its impressive 3.5X year-over-year growth. From July through September of 2024, The Zero Proof outbound order volume grew by 86.9% for DTC and 173.3% for B2B.

The Zero Proof has significantly reduced its standard delivery costs through Stord Parcel combined with Stord’s Last-Mile Optimization software.  Through Stord’s expansive carrier network of nationwide and local carriers, The Zero Proof enjoys the most flexible options with far improved negotiated rates. Stord technology identifies further savings by intelligently selecting the proper carrier to hit the promised delivery date based on real historical data, and selectively downgrading to reduce costs on every package.

As The Zero Proof prepares to service a massive holiday spike and Dry January for thirsty non-alchoholic party season, they are protected from massive temporary demand surcharges implemented by carriers. These additional costs can add 5-20% in cost depending on the carrier and service level. Through Stord’s comprehensive parcel offerings, The Zero Proof is projected to save 78% vs the carrier list price to deliver their peak order volume. These savings grow as their order volume increases, meaning the margins on their holiday sales flow back into their pockets and not the carriers.

A culture of excellence

At the core of this partnership is a dedication to The Zero Proof and their end consumers. Stord’s team is constantly making improvements to drive greater efficiencies and cost savings. In 2024 alone, Stord completed nearly 1000 operational audits across the pick, pack, receive and putaway process paths to find and maximize the physical fulfillment process, thereby driving down costs and time to fulfill an order.

Stord’s team of engineers regularly review the data from The Zero Proof’s consumer behavior to help identify key SKUs, develop strategic kits, and provide insights to better improve the day-to-day experience for their end consumers. 

The future of The Zero Proof

The Zero Proof has ambitious goals and Stord is prepared to help achieve them with ease. In the near future, The Zero Proof can expand to a multi-node structure to reduce transit times and parcel zones on DTC orders to key markets, as well as a seamless expansion to European markets through Stord’s network of facilities across North America, The United Kingdom and The Netherlands.

As The Zero Proof continues their meteoric growth, they will continue to improve consumer experience through Stord’s Shipment Protection. This one-click tool provides a turnkey process to manage damage and theft exceptions and improve timely exception handling. This increased resolution speed will allow The Zero Proof to turn potentially negative experiences into loyalty building interactions while significantly easing the demands on their customer service teams.

Cheers to the future of The Zero Proof, a brand truly committed to delivering a next-level consumer experience for all of their customers on all of their orders.