Content Strategy Manager
Descartes Peoplevox is the secret weapon powering the warehouses of some of the most ambitious, fastest growing ecomm brands around the world. Think “pushing out 50,000 orders a day during AYBL’s birthday sale”, or “supporting Lorna Jane’s global logistics network out of Melbourne, Australia”.
This is a highly underrated strategy. Many brands don't realise that their back office can be their secret weapon. So much time and effort is spent on the front end. Not just the D2C touch point design and UX, but the money and effort that goes into marketing their product. Which is all great, but if you can't cater to your demand then it can all fall short. This is particularly important when a brand is expanding internationally. Out-of-stock can kill the perfect GTM in a new region.
Peoplevox highlights two huge gains any direct-to-consumer brand can make by introducing a level of automation into their fulfilment processes:
Stop Relying on Manual Warehouse Processes
Starting with AYBL, based in Redditch, UK. The Edgerton brothers have built an athleisure behemoth by focusing on community - alongside a product people actually want to wear!
When they launch a sale, they can forecast order volumes of up to 10x more than a standard day. Flexing up means bringing in 30-50 extra temporary staff to handle these spikes in demand.
No one likes the thought of hiring temp staff. It’s not cheap, it’s not always easy - risk goes up (mispicks, shrinkage, injuries/accidents).
It’s a little strange to hear a warehouse management system bragging about temps, right?
Hiring temporary staff is a part of life, like taxes, or being disappointed by your government. It’s the automation in their warehouse - in the form of smart pick-routing and barcode scanning - that allows them to do this without a hitch.
If you’re relying on manual processes or people remembering where products are kept, you’re never going to be able to bring new staff in and get them effective fast enough.
However, the warehouse management system does all the ‘remembering’ for the AYBL team and lets their temp labour pick and pack orders within minutes of being in the warehouse for the very first time.
Recognise and incentivise top performers
On the other side of the world, Lorna Jane have experienced similar issues. Lorna Jane are a truly global player and one of the most recognized and respected brands in Australia.
At the centre of it all sits Danny Hancock, COO. He told Peoplevox that there were two reasons for bringing in automation. An elite warehouse management system “changed the game”.
Firstly, every picker became 35% more efficient overnight.
In 3 ecommerce distribution centres, pickers used to walk at least 10-15 aisles for every pick run – now they’ve cut this down to just 2 or 3 based on smarter pick-route logic and better product storage.
Secondly, Danny can’t be in 3 places at once.
An automated WMS with audit trails on every item movement and every order shipped provides live dashboards and key reports. The team can monitor productivity levels, staff their sites accordingly and recognize top performers, leading to a leaner operating model and a superior end customer experience.
