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How Knopman Marks Automated Textbook Fulfillment and Cut Shipping Costs by 30%

CHALLENGE

Before partnering with Mimeo, Knopman Marks managed textbook and workbook fulfillment almost entirely in-house. A separate printer produced the inventory, which was shipped to the company’s Manhattan office, where staff stored it, packed it, and shipped it out order by order.

Ian Franklin, Chief Operating Officer at Knopman Marks, remembers what that looked like day to day. “We would literally be the ones who would take the textbook, put it in a FedEx package, print out the label, and bring that label down to the FedEx location that was half a block from our office.” During peak exam season, the team called the piles of shipping labels “sausage rolls,” stacking them as tall as a person before hauling them out for drop-off.

The process left no room to scale. Every order required a person, and every busy season strained the team further. It also tied Knopman Marks to physical office space for printing and logistics, a dependency that became a liability once the business needed to operate remotely.

HOW MIMEO HELPED

Knopman Marks moved its textbook and workbook inventory onto Mimeo's print and fulfillment platform, connecting its e-commerce system directly to Mimeo through an API. Now, when a candidate places an order, their name, address, and product details are sent automatically to Mimeo, which verifies the shipping address and fulfills it without any manual review.

The partnership also solved a pricing problem. Knopman Marks had been quoting shipping costs using a complex formula based on book weight and dimensions through a third-party tool, a system that slowed down their checkout experience and frustrated candidates with shipping costs that sometimes ran as high as $79 for two-day delivery.

Working with Mimeo, Knopman Marks moved to a flat-rate shipping model, so every order gets the same predictable price regardless of what's in the box. Orders with special requirements, like international or overnight shipping, get a real-time quote back through the API in seconds.

THE RESULT

The shift to automated fulfillment freed up more than 40 hours of staff time every week. Moving to flat-rate shipping cut both Knopman Marks' own shipping costs and what candidates pay by more than 30% over the past year.

The bigger shift has been strategic. Knopman Marks has grown from 8 employees in 2014 to 45 today, with student enrollment growing exponentially over that same period, all without adding headcount dedicated to logistics or fulfillment.

"We are not a printing company. We are not a logistics company," Franklin says. "We do not want to spend all of our time at Knopman Marks talking about logistics and making sure candidates are getting materials, because really we want to focus on what we're good at, which is training and education." That focus has let the team put its growing headcount toward coursework and candidate outcomes instead of shipping labels.

Today, more than 20,000 orders a year move from Knopman Marks' platform to a candidate's door without a person touching them in between.

THE BOTTOM LINE

Knopman Marks turned fulfillment from a daily operational burden into something that runs on its own, giving the team more than 40 hours a week back and cutting shipping costs by over 30%. That reliability is what lets Knopman Marks stay focused on training and education instead of logistics.
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