How Ernest Turned a Cold Call into a Cold Chain Revamp

At Ernest, we love coming up with better ways to protect delicate products during shipment—and nothing is more delicate than human blood. When we learned that our client was shipping over 10,000 blood specimen units a month, we set out to find a way to help them keep samples cold during shipment while also keeping costs down. Spectracell Laboratories in Houston is a personal wellness engineer, specializing in proprietary micronutrient testing to help prevent and manage disease. In addition to drawing and testing blood in their on-site laboratory, they receive around 400 testing kits per day via Fedex, sent by physicians from around the world. While the packaging Spectracell was using did a good job protecting against breakage, it was temperature dependent—so if a specimen didn’t arrive within two days, it was no longer viable. This was costing the company considerable losses. Enter Ernest. Working closely with Spectracell, we designed a new specimen shipping solution that solved the temperature problem and more. And as an added bonus, our just-in-time inventory management saves the company money, space, and stress.