Dov Vargas of Dharma Yoga Wheel has been a long time Weebly customer and a Shippo user. We recently interviewed him about how he started his business and how he worked to scale the business.
How did you start Dharma Yoga Wheel?
I really started Dharma Yoga Wheel by accident.
My dad had a yoga studio as well, and one day I found a piece of plastic in the closet. It must have been there for 30 years, and I just started figuring out poses with it. It was fun!
Raquel and I started working together to figure out more poses with this piece of plastic in the studio. People saw us doing it, they wanted to try it out, so we started teaching lessons with it.
One of our students was a wood carpenter and they offered to make the first version of the wheel so that they can try it out at home. Then more students started wanting it.
The wood version was really expensive and intricate, so we started making it out of PVC pipes. They’re easier to manufacture, sturdier, and more affordable.
Tell me about the early days of the operations
The wheels are manufactured on Long Island, but I was still in Manhattan at the time.
Every day we’d get like 20 orders, and I’d have to go pick them up and package them up. I managed the orders and shipping so I had to make sure the labels said the right things, and the boxes had the right wheel. Then I’d load 20 of the wheels on a dolly and roll it to the post office.
It was interesting, to say the least.
Now we’re based out of Long Island, 5 minutes from where the wheels are made. We have a nice warehouse with a few employees who go to pick up the wheels, package them, and ship them out. We get the carriers to come pick up the boxes now.
I used to teach lessons a lot more, but with the business growing quickly this has really became my main gig. But we’re hoping to open up a yoga studio in the area and develop wheel classes.
What’s your shipping process like now that you’re working with Shippo on Weebly
I’ve always been loyal to Weebly. We’ve been working with them for a long time. But shipping back then was a nightmare! We got up to over 100 orders a day, and all we did was copy and paste address information from one place to another.
Then Weebly rolled out in the Weebly App Center and we decided to give you a try even though it was just a beta version back then.
With Shippo, we use discounted USPS rates to send orders out domestically and internationally.
It’s really nice to have orders synced directly from our Weebly store to the dashboard so that we’ll never have to worry about copy and pasting again! We also use your international shipments workflow to create customs documents for orders going outside of the States.
One of our favorite things is the ability to create pay-on-use returns labels. It’s nice to be able to create them directly from the existing order, making it much easier to managing returns and faster to process.
I really started Dharma Yoga Wheel by accident.
My dad had a yoga studio as well, and one day I found a piece of plastic in the closet. It must have been there for 30 years, and I just started figuring out poses with it. It was fun!
Raquel and I started working together to figure out more poses with this piece of plastic in the studio. People saw us doing it, they wanted to try it out, so we started teaching lessons with it.
One of our students was a wood carpenter and they offered to make the first version of the wheel so that they can try it out at home. Then more students started wanting it.
The wood version was really expensive and intricate, so we started making it out of PVC pipes. They’re easier to manufacture, sturdier, and more affordable.
Tell me about the early days of the operations
The wheels are manufactured on Long Island, but I was still in Manhattan at the time.
Every day we’d get like 20 orders, and I’d have to go pick them up and package them up. I managed the orders and shipping so I had to make sure the labels said the right things, and the boxes had the right wheel. Then I’d load 20 of the wheels on a dolly and roll it to the post office.
It was interesting, to say the least.
Now we’re based out of Long Island, 5 minutes from where the wheels are made. We have a nice warehouse with a few employees who go to pick up the wheels, package them, and ship them out. We get the carriers to come pick up the boxes now.
I used to teach lessons a lot more, but with the business growing quickly this has really became my main gig. But we’re hoping to open up a yoga studio in the area and develop wheel classes.
What’s your shipping process like now that you’re working with Shippo on Weebly
I’ve always been loyal to Weebly. We’ve been working with them for a long time. But shipping back then was a nightmare! We got up to over 100 orders a day, and all we did was copy and paste address information from one place to another.
Then Weebly rolled out in the Weebly App Center and we decided to give you a try even though it was just a beta version back then.
With Shippo, we use discounted USPS rates to send orders out domestically and internationally.
It’s really nice to have orders synced directly from our Weebly store to the dashboard so that we’ll never have to worry about copy and pasting again! We also use your international shipments workflow to create customs documents for orders going outside of the States.
One of our favorite things is the ability to create pay-on-use returns labels. It’s nice to be able to create them directly from the existing order, making it much easier to managing returns and faster to process.
Shan Lian Shan is the Marketing Manager at Shippo, an API and dashboard that helps eCommerce businesses create, track, and manage shipments all from one location.