Name: HempLucid Results with Fulfil ERP
Creator: Fulfil

Overview

HempLucid, a premium organic hemp wellness brand with nearly a decade of industry leadership, faced a critical operational challenge: their existing inventory management system, Luminous, couldn't support the stringent compliance requirements, complex manufacturing processes, and multi-channel operations needed to compete in the highly regulated hemp and wellness space.

When this Utah-based manufacturer with organic certification requirements, multi-stage liquid manufacturing, B2B and D2C sales channels, and rigorous lot tracking needs sought a modern ERP solution, they discovered how purpose-built manufacturing and inventory software could transform their entire operation, reducing audit times from 4 hours to 45 minutes and achieving pick-pack error rates well under 0.1%.

The company's previous systems had created significant operational bottlenecks:

Manual Compliance Tracking: Hours spent manually exporting and cross-referencing data for organic certification audits
Limited Lot Traceability: Inability to quickly trace ingredients through multi-stage manufacturing to final customers
Inaccurate Costing: Landed cost tracking failures and unit conversion errors, creating millions in valuation discrepancies
Multi-Channel Complexity: Bugs preventing accurate inventory updates across multiple Shopify stores
Manufacturing Limitations: Systems unable to handle variable liquid formulations

Nathan Beckham, CEO and Co-Founder, knew they needed a robust solution. "We've been a premium brand and product innovator in the hemp wellness space for almost 10 years," Nathan noted. "We're known for our organic formulations and manufacturing. We needed a system that could handle that complexity without compromise."

View video transcript — Nathan Beckham, CEO & Co-Founder

I'm Nathan Beckham, CEO at HempLucid, one of the co-founders. Our company's been around for almost 10 years. In the hemp wellness space, we've been a premium brand and product innovator. We're known for our organic formulations and manufacturing, and that's part of our premium offering. We also offer innovative wellness gummies that include cannabinoids and other supplements such as functional mushrooms and lion's mane. We have a sleep gummy that's really phenomenal, and that's where we come from on the wellness side of hemp, trying to produce products to help people on their wellness journey that may be alternatives to what they're already using. We've gone through a lot of different builds and tech stacks. We started on WooCommerce and Shopify. We were using Stitch Labs at the time with QuickBooks and Xero. We ended up connecting a nice little tech stack that was great for a startup, but we were missing manufacturing, so we moved to Cin7 for a while. With our tech stack and the manufacturing ERP we needed to add on, we ran into a problem with that bulky software. It just seemed like it had been around for quite some time and the layers of complexity had been installed upon it, and it was not what we wanted. I think we were four months in and we were just like, this is not going to work. We unwound into a very light program. We spent a year on Luminous, and we ended up just kind of shipping everything out of Shopify. We couldn't ship from Luminous as efficiently as Shopify. It's useless if Shopify is just better at everything, including the reporting and all of it. We weren't getting cost structure pushed. There were bugs on quantity pushes to multiple stores. It was the multiple store factor that really broke that software and created some complexity that didn't translate very well. So we had to manually input costs, manually input a lot of different things and pull data over, and it turned into a lot of manual reporting work. As an organic certified handler and manufacturer, it's very important for us to pull these reports quickly, otherwise it just takes time when these inspections come. We're also a hemp brand. We have inspections two, three, four times a year randomly. We need to be able to do reporting effectively and quickly and confidently so that we can show these reports. That was problematic with a lot of manual entry for movements and manufacturing issues that we had to work around. Brandon, the warehouse and production manager, was spending a lot of time just trying to update systems and keep them right through manual updates. That's not a great way to run an ERP or inventory management system. We just weren't happy with it. It was causing scaling issues. A lot of extra time was put in there. Luminous didn't handle things as we wanted to scale and add our B2B website, which we run separately, or add other sites or 3PLs. We turned our warehouse into a 3PL service that we would provide for other brands that we sold into our B2B sales channel. So we were holding inventory and selling these brands, and being able to adapt and be agile as the industry and the company changes, adding different ways to make revenue, it just wasn't effective. We were able to incorporate some phenomenal technology with Fulfil, including the scan guns. We had a small operation and we wanted to be really efficient on shipping. We had used so many third-party 3PLs and it was not only costly, the amount of mistakes was unreal. Returns were costly and it just added a layer of complexity and cost. When you own the process and you can dive into efficiencies, it became a very efficient process with Fulfil. We adapted the scan guns and we were able to print, pick, pack, and ship orders within one minute, if not even faster, at peak demand. It was phenomenal. It was lock-coded and protected, it would give warnings. We worked with the Fulfil team to make that scan gun absolutely fire. As an operator or founder or executive looking to streamline, I don't think there is a better system out there. We've looked at a lot of different ones, even Zoho Inventory. A lot of people say tack on ShipStation or this or that and everything's going to be fine, and in the end it just adds extra complexity that really doesn't add up to savings. What we noticed with Fulfil is we were shipping orders faster than even 3PLs could. We set up a process using their software and their guidance that was better than anybody on the market, and I stand by that. We have the lowest pick-pack errors ever, well under 0.1%. We know how important it is when the conveyor belt of shipping gets reversed from mistakes. There's so much extra time: customer support, reship, cost of shipping labels, boxes, redo, and stopping your system from moving one direction and then reversing it. That's very costly. If you can just keep it going in one direction without mistakes, it's such an efficiency. You start at the source and avoid the problem from the beginning. I think Fulfil showed us that was possible. On the other side, it offered very much expansion into multi-store operation. The quality of the manufacturing capabilities, multi-stage manufacturing, the reporting, there were a lot of awesome things that we were able to take advantage of, really built right into our organic manufacturing certifications and handling. It was necessary to meet those requirements. It's very easy to back-trace stuff through the system. In CPG manufacturing, especially in the wellness or supplement space, there's a lot of tracking and inventory management and lot coding. You're giving out ingestibles. You need to make sure that your software is tracking all of that. Fulfil helped us gain our organic handler certification, which is not an easy thing to do.

The Challenge: When Compliance Meets Complexity

Hours Lost to Manual Compliance Reporting

As an organic certified handler and manufacturer in the heavily regulated hemp industry, HempLucid faces inspections 2-4 times per year from multiple agencies. Brandon Orgill, Executive Vice President and COO, explained the previous reality:

My last organic inspection with our previous system took me about four hours. Instead of being able to click through, click here, click here, follow hyperlinks everywhere, I had to download this, export that, sort that in Excel over and over again.

— Brandon Orgill, Executive Vice President & COO

The manual process created:

Extended audit windows taking valuable management time
Risk of compliance violations due to incomplete data trails
Inability to quickly respond to inspector requests
Manual cross-referencing across multiple spreadsheets and systems

Lot Tracking That Didn't Track

For a company producing ingestible wellness products, accurate lot tracking is mission-critical. Brandon described the frustration: "A lot of other software, either they didn't handle lot tracking, or they didn't handle it well enough. A lot of that information was technically there within the system, but it wasn't very visible. So if ever it came time for an audit, the process took five times longer than it needed to."

Manufacturing Systems That Didn't Understand Liquids

HempLucid's multi-stage liquid manufacturing process proved to be a breaking point for lightweight inventory systems. Brandon explained: "In our industry, we're doing a lot of liquid manufacturing, so our inputs can vary from batch to batch. That was a hang-up for a lot of systems because they wanted to make a bike (you know, two wheels and one frame), and we're not making a bike. Sometimes I've got 2.5 wheels, and their systems didn't quite like doing that and didn't know how to handle it."

The Cost of Inaccurate Costing

Brandon recalled a particularly frustrating issue: "I've run into software where they kept having conversion error issues. We might be buying something in kilograms and consuming it in grams. And all of a sudden, it thinks my product cost me $2 million to make when it cost me $2. That's an actual issue I ran into."

Multi-Store Nightmares

As HempLucid scaled to serve both B2B and D2C channels through multiple Shopify stores, their previous system buckled. Nathan explained: "As soon as we added the second store, it didn't really want to send updates to that store. We had to manually update certain stores, and that defeats the purpose if you're an inventory management software system."

Data Corruption and Lost Production Records

Perhaps most alarming was the instability of their previous systems. Brandon described one particularly painful incident: "They pushed a software update that deleted six months of our production records. And they couldn't find a fix for it. So I had to go back to all my hard copies for everything."

The Decision: Why HempLucid Chose Fulfil ERP

After cycling through multiple systems, including Stitch Labs, Cin7, and Luminous, HempLucid needed an eCommerce ERP that could handle their unique combination of requirements without compromise.

Purpose-Built for Complex Manufacturing with Compliance

Unlike generic inventory systems designed for simple operations, Fulfil understood HempLucid's reality from day one.

Brandon noted: "Fulfil offered a lot of expansion into multi-store operation, the quality of the manufacturing capabilities, multi-stage manufacturing, the reporting. There was a lot of awesome little things there that we were able to take advantage of, really built right into our organic manufacturing certifications and handling, and it was necessary to meet those requirements."

Nathan emphasized the compliance advantage: "It's very easy if you have issues to backtrack stuff through the system. Fulfil's ERP reporting is superior. That can help in CPG manufacturing, especially in the wellness or supplement space, where you have to deal with a lot of tracking, inventory management, and lot coding. You're giving out ingestibles. You need to make sure that your software is tracking all that legitimately."

Traceability That Actually Works

HempLucid needed to trace every ingredient through multi-stage manufacturing to final customers in seconds, not hours.

Brandon explained the difference: "If I wanted to do a full lot tracking on different products with other software, all that information was there, but it was like, okay, I have to go export this, I've got to go export that, I've got to export this. Just to see all the information. In Fulfil, I can just click, click, click. And I've got access to everything top to bottom in a matter of seconds."

He continued: "You can easily backtrace every ingredient that's used for every single product and go, this customer got this product, which had ABC and DE ingredients in it. And I received all of those on these different POs on these days. You can just tie everything together so perfectly that from a compliance standpoint, it is a game changer."

Manufacturing That Understands Variables

Fulfil's flexible bill of materials and work order system could handle HempLucid's variable liquid formulations without forcing workarounds.

Brandon noted: "The flexibility on the manufacturing side was crucial. In our industry, we're doing a lot of liquid manufacturing, so our inputs can vary from batch to batch. Fulfil understood that from the beginning and built systems that could handle it."

Accurate Costing and Inventory Valuation

After experiencing systems that couldn't handle unit conversions, HempLucid needed confidence in their financial data.

Brandon explained: "One of the other big things that's been very nice with Fulfil that has been an issue with other things is accurately tracking landed costs for all of our products, having costing across everything straight through the system. Anybody who's had to handle any of this on their own knows it can be a little bit of a nightmare making your own sheets and everything."

He added: "Fulfil just handles that perfectly. I've never run into conversion errors or massive valuation issues."

Multi-Channel Excellence

After struggling with systems that broke when adding a second store, HempLucid needed true multi-channel order management and inventory management capabilities.

Nathan explained: "We have a B2B and a D2C sales channel. We've got other brands we represent. Being able to adapt and be agile as the industry and the company changes, adding these specific different ways to make revenue — previous systems just weren't effective at that. With Fulfil, we were able to make that work quite easily, getting that data across back and forth and setting up the different safety stocks for each channel. Fulfil put a lot of thought into that."

Best-in-Class Warehouse Operations

Nathan's experience with Fulfil's warehouse capabilities remains a benchmark: "With the scan guns, we're able to print, pick, pack and ship orders within one minute, if not even faster, at peak demand. I don't think I've ever seen a system at any facility be able to handle what we're doing. Phenomenal setup."

He continued: "We set up a process that was better than anybody on the market. And I stand by that. We have the lowest pick pack errors ever, well under 0.1%."

The Implementation: Thorough, Strategic, and Collaborative

Having experienced multiple system implementations, Nathan recognized something different about Fulfil's approach.

Nathan contrasted Fulfil's implementation with others: "Other software onboarding can be very templatized, very quick and very pushy to get through some stages. First, the sales handoff and then you're like, wait a minute, the onboarding is much different than what we talked about. With Fulfil, the team flew out to understand exactly how we could be a good fit for each other. I was very impressed with the amount of time and nuance we spent going through the whole scope to ensure everyone was aligned, and that important edge cases were documented for the onboarding process to be effective."

Brandon explained what made Fulfil's ERP implementation different: "Fulfil's implementation process is very thorough, which is a breath of fresh air because they're asking questions, getting things lined up to make sure that they have processes built out that match my particular needs and also suggesting ways to save me time."

The Impact: Efficiency, Confidence, and Scalability

5x Faster Compliance Audits

The most dramatic impact came during organic certification audits.

My last organic inspection that I did with Fulfil, I was able to do the entire thing, the software side of things, in a little under 45 minutes. My most recent piece of software took me about four hours. They're asking the exact same questions, verifying the exact same information.

— Brandon Orgill, Executive Vice President & COO

He explained why: "Fulfil's a huge time saver on that. Instead of download this, export that, sort that in Excel over and over again, everything is just hyperlinked and connected. You can follow the trail instantly."

Complete Ingredient Traceability in Seconds

Brandon described the new reality: "I've got access to everything top to bottom in a matter of seconds."

He contrasted this with previous systems: "A lot of other software, if I wanted to look at production planning, I had to export multiple different things and then kind of put stuff together myself. If I wanted to do a full lot tracking on different products, all that information was there but it was like, okay, I have to go export this, I've got to go export that, I got to export this."

Production Tasks 5x Faster

Brandon noted the daily efficiency gains: "Something I can do in Fulfil in probably a minute might take me five minutes outside of Fulfil. In little chunks, it doesn't feel like a lot, but it certainly adds up."

He continued: "Once you've got everything set up and in place, running production takes seconds, minutes max for something that might take significantly longer in other pieces of software where it's also harder to verify if there were any data entry errors."

Near-Zero Shipping Errors

Nathan emphasized the impact on fulfillment accuracy: "We have the lowest pick pack errors ever, well under 0.1%. We're shipping orders faster than 3PLs. We set up a process using Fulfil's warehouse management system and their guidance that's better than anybody on the market."

Elimination of Manual Reconciliation

Brandon reflected on recovered time: "I used to spend a lot of time tracking down issues that were caused by other people who were using the software because the software didn't behave the way they thought it was going to behave. Without all the tracking that Fulfil has natively, sometimes it was quite a bit of a headache to figure out what was going on, where things went wrong, and why my count's off here, and who did that. That amount of savings are really hard to quantify, but it is significant."

Trusted Financial Data

After experiencing systems with million-dollar valuation errors, Brandon appreciated the accuracy: "Fulfil just handles costing perfectly. I've never run into conversion errors or massive valuation issues. I can trust the financial data coming out of the system."

Scaling Without Breaking

Brandon highlighted the scalability: "The ability to plug somebody into Fulfil once they know how things are supposed to work, you kind of taught them the flows, they can pick it up very easily and the time saving on not having to deal with user error issues is pretty massive."

He added: "Fulfil has the ability to scale and do so many things. Maybe I don't need a capability right now for my stage where I'm at with my business, but five years down the line, this is still going to work when I'm doing 10X the volume."

View video transcript — Brandon Orgill, Executive Vice President & COO

My name is Brandon. I am the VP and COO, and I run all of operations here at HempLucid. I am the guy who handles all of the WMS and ERP software, basically top to bottom. We sell out of two different Shopify channels primarily. We also do a little bit of white labeling, sell for some random clients across the country. We operate out of one warehouse. There's been a few big challenges I've run into with various pieces of software. In our industry and with our organic certification, we do have to have pretty stringent lot code tracking for everything that we do. What I was running into with a bunch of other software is either they didn't handle it or they didn't handle it well. A lot of that information was technically there within the system, but it wasn't very visible. So if it ever came time for an audit, the process took five times longer than it needed to. One of the other problems I ran into is just bugs where technically stuff was in there, but data got corrupted and I'd end up going back and having to check hard copies to cross-verify everything. Part of an inspection that should have taken me 15 or 20 minutes might take me two or three hours because I had to go outside the system. One of the big things that's been nice with Fulfil that has been an issue with other software is accurately tracking landed costs for all of our products. Having costing across everything straight through the system. Anybody who's had to handle any of this on their own knows it can be a bit of a nightmare making your own sheets. That's one of the things that other pieces of software we've used have just not handled very well. Fulfil is really good at helping you figure out forecasting, getting your inventory planned out, figuring out what your sales velocities are, putting everything in one spot so that you don't have to go build out a bunch of sheets and do a bunch of analysis on your own. Obviously you still want to verify and cross-check everything, but everything's there and easy to find. It makes your life super easy. Also, if you ever run into any issues and have to go back and check what went into a work order, what went to a customer, you can easily back-trace every ingredient that's used for every single product. This customer got this product which had A, B, C, and D ingredients in it. And I received all those on these different POs on these days. You can tie everything together perfectly. From a compliance standpoint, it is a game changer. We've used a few pieces of software over the years. Most of them were smaller ones that didn't have the capabilities we needed. The flexibility on the manufacturing side, in our industry with liquid manufacturing, our inputs can vary from batch to batch. That was a hangup for a lot of other systems because they wanted to make a bike with two wheels and one frame, and we're not making a bike. Sometimes I've got 2.5 wheels and their systems didn't know how to handle it. That really helped drive the decision, along with the ability to back-trace everything. There's a link for everything. You can click through to find the PO, see what customers everything went to. It makes your life a million times easier than jumping between five different pieces of software, checking this spreadsheet, going to Google Drive, looking through email. Fulfil has the ability to tie all of that together. My experience with Fulfil has been great from a customer service standpoint. I've worked with other companies that have decent customer service, people willing to get back to me, communicative, nice. But the problem resolution side was always hard. When you're talking about software managing your inventory, sending inventory to your different stores, keeping you compliant for different certifications, you really want things to work properly. Having somebody there who's willing to help get it fixed is very important. That has been one of the bigger headaches with other companies we worked with. Nice people on the surface, but sometimes the problem resolution just took way too long and sometimes they broke stuff they didn't know how to fix. We worked with a software company that pushed a software update that deleted six months of our production records and they couldn't find a fix for it. I had to go back to all my hard copies. Fulfil offers really extensive release notes anytime they push an update. If anything is going to be changing, as long as you're staying on top of reading it, you know what's changing, why, and how. If you need to adjust process, it's there for you. Fulfil's implementation process is very thorough. Beyond the needs that I actually have, which is a breath of fresh air. The team asks me questions, gets things lined up to make sure they have processes built out that match my particular needs. Whereas I'm usually just saying give me the software and I'll play around and make it work, they're asking how I want to use it. They go, okay, if this is what you're planning on doing, here's what we can do within the software and here's some ways we can set it up on the back end to make sure it's doing exactly what you want. And sometimes that means, hey, this is the process you've been doing, we can do it better for you. The key thing I would say more than anything is it's incredibly thorough. Very good at asking what I need, what my processes are, what I want to get out of it. That is not something I've run into with other companies. A lot of people were like, okay, let's import some data and you're good to go. You start playing around. You realize this didn't pull in the way you thought. This process isn't flowing how you expected. The sales pitch they gave you on a particular module doesn't really cover your use case. That's one of the things where you don't run into that with Fulfil. You know exactly what you're going to get because you've talked through the process top to bottom: receiving, making purchase orders, doing jobs to make inventory, how you're selling to different customers, how everything's being tracked. Just making it so no matter who you plug in, it's extremely hard for them to accidentally mess something up. The big differentiator for me is just the ease. It's not like other software doesn't have capabilities. It's the ease, the time saving, and the confidence knowing things are going to work properly. My last organic inspection with Fulfil, I was able to do the entire thing, the software side of checking records and everything, in a little under 45 minutes. My most recent piece of software before that took me about four hours. Something I can do in Fulfil in probably a minute might take me five outside of it. In little chunks it doesn't feel like a lot, but it certainly adds up. All of my experiences working with everybody at Fulfil have been top-notch. Everybody is super nice, super professional, super respectful. They're very good at identifying what your need is, identifying the problem, letting you know timelines on getting stuff fixed, implemented, done, and following through. I've never run into a hiccup on that front. That's pretty rare when you're dealing with software that has as much complexity as Fulfil can bring to the table. It has the ability to scale and do so many things. Maybe I don't need something right now for my stage, but five years down the line this is still going to work when I'm doing 10x the volume. A lot of other software works today and you're going to have to switch over in two or three or five years.

Looking Forward: Building for the Next Decade in Hemp Wellness

For a company operating in one of the most regulated industries in consumer packaged goods, choosing the right ERP wasn't just about operational efficiency, it was about enabling continued growth without compromising on compliance, quality, or customer service.

Nathan reflected on the industry context: "We're here in Utah, one of the wellness capitals of manufacturing or supplement manufacturing in the United States. There's softwares out here, multiple people, and seeing what everyone's trying. But Fulfil has been the best that we've ever used."

Brandon emphasized the partnership value: "Everybody I've ever talked to at Fulfil, top to bottom, has been super nice, super professional, super respectful. They're very good at identifying what your need is, identifying what the problem is, letting you know timelines on getting stuff fixed, implemented, done, and following through. That's pretty rare when you're dealing with software companies."

Brandon's advice to other brands: "You get what you pay for. There's a lot of pieces of software out there that have on the surface the base capabilities that you need. Figuring out the real capabilities and how it really is going to function is a massively important part of the process."

Nathan concluded: "In CPG manufacturing, especially in the wellness or supplement space, there's a lot of tracking and inventory management and lot coding requirements. You're giving out ingestibles. You need to make sure that your software is tracking all that legitimately. Fulfil helped us gain our Organic Handler certification, which is not an easy thing to do. After everything we've tried, Fulfil is the best system we've used."

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How HempLucid Achieved 5x Faster Compliance Audits and Near-Zero Shipping Errors by moving from Luminous to Fulfil