Karta Bottle

Karta Bottle may be new on the scene, but they’ve already made a name for themselves in the eCommerce world. Back in 2022, their unique barbell jack water bottle, Karta Origin, became an overnight sensation on TikTok, capturing the attention of millions before pre-orders were even available.

Fast-forward to today, and Karta Bottle is experiencing a great deal of early success, thanks to both the innovative bottle design and their early social media triumph.

The challenge

Prior to joining James and James, Pete Anwyll, Karta Bottle’s Founder, had a basic understanding of eCommerce and fulfilment due to previously working with a small Amazon brand. From his perspective, he was planning on outsourcing fulfilment when orders volumes got too high to handle in-house.

It turned out that Pete would need 3PL support well before that, as his MOQ for his first shipment was 3000 units. Pete already had 160 units in his flat for promotional purposes, and these were already taking up way too much livable space.

The other major challenge was international fulfilment. Due to Karta Bottle’s enormous popularity on TikTok, people from over the world were – and continue to be – seeing the bottle.

It wasn’t just gym enthusiasts from the UK that wanted to get their hands on it, it was people in the USA, Europe, and Australia too. But shipping heavy items overseas is expensive, and takes a long time. Pete needed a way around the problem.

@kartabottles Socials are blowing up now, need that time back #2platesclub #benchpress #gymmemes #toxictrait #gym ♬ Pop Smoke candy shop – EZD

@kartabottles Shoutout all the $1 plastic gym bottles tho #gym #bottle #waterbottle #deadlift #bodybuilding ♬ original sound – Carsyn Yorkoski

What we delivered

International Reach

Right from the get-go, Karta Bottle made the strategic decision to split their stock evenly between the UK and USA. With such a rapid route into America, this smart move has generated a substantial increase in interest for the bottle amongst American consumers.

This is largely due to the significantly cheaper shipping options, and much faster delivery.

And, when James and James Australia launches later this year, Karta Bottle plans to tap into the Australian market, too.

Time-saving service and software

The nature of Karta Bottle’s product makes it extremely difficult to ship in-house. They’re fairly heavy, bulky bottles, so packing those up and taking them to the post office would have taken a lot of time and energy away from other business activities.

With fulfilment taken care of, Karta Bottle has more time and mental capacity to spend on essential growth activities like marketing, product development, and networking. After already going viral on TikTok, Pete wants to continue to capitalise on the success he’s found on the platform, and venture into the world of advertisements.

Getting the most out of your digital marketing activities requires a lot of attention, and now he has the chance to give those channels the attention they need for him to see his desired ROI.

Additionally, our award-winning software, ControlPort, notifies Pete if there’s any issues with orders. So, unless he gets a notification from ControlPort, he knows that he’s free to spend his time on other things.

eCommerce Support

The world of eCommerce is complex, especially when just starting out. At James and James, our in-house experts have tons of industry knowledge and experience, and you can reach out to them at any time.

When Pete was unable to find answers to his queries online regarding EU Freight-Forwarding, he simply got in touch with us and we were able to point him in the right direction.

Goals for the year ahead

There’s exciting times on the horizon for Karta Bottle.

In the short-term, we’re going to help them reach gym-lovers down under in Australia once our new AUS Fulfilment Centre opens. They’re already finding a lot of consumers in Australia are interested in his bottle, but are currently deterred by high shopping costs and long delivery times. With our Australian Fulfilment Centre, he’ll be able to fix both of those issues immediately.

Beyond that, new colour variants of the Karta Origin bottle will be hitting the website soon, and Pete has some exciting products in development designed to increase the lifetime value of his customers.

We’re incredibly excited to have Karta Bottle on-board, and we can’t wait to continue our growth journey together, both domestically and internationally!