E-Commerce, Wholesale & Large Retailer/Department Store Fulfillment Program
Challenge
A growing Southern-inspired gentlemen’s apparel company, had been featured in Southern Living Magazine and a variety of regional southern publications. When onboarding with FSI for their fulfillment support, this company was selling to two primary sales channels including direct to consumer and to regional specialty stores. Since that time, the company has grown to sell through additional large retailers including Belk, Dillard’s, TJ Maxx/Marshall’s, and Von Maur as well as on-line retailers such as Zulily and RuLaLa. Supporting this growth and addition of sales channels is where FSI can give companies a real competitive advantage. The company owners needed FSI’s combination of technical and solid logistics expertise to help expand their supply chain and continue to realize their potential for growth.
Solution
In the beginning, FSI worked with the company to develop a support plan including e-commerce support from their existing web site, wholesale order management and shipping as well as offering precise inventory management and new packaging options.
The first step was an automated approach to deliver orders from the company’s existing Magento platform e-commerce site to FSI for processing. FSI deployed a programming team to write this integration, which used our existing set of web services (APIs) to easily connect the site to our internal Order Management System seamlessly. This integration also included delivery of inventory levels back to Magento as well as order status updates and tracking data to help the company close the loop in their communications with consumers.
Additionally, FSI developed a process for serving the wholesalers that sell this apparel line up and down the East Coast. These retail establishments are small companies themselves and needed the confidence that they could receive the correct merchandise to properly promote and sell this clothing line.
With the addition of large retail sales channels, FSI used EDI technology to help our client work in compliance with retailers including Belk stores. Dillard’s and Von Maur are now SP retailers and there are plans to add additional retailers in the coming year. This type of sales channel was previously unattainable for our client due to the lack of experience in that area with their former provider.
FSI provides all data for this program into our FSI Enterprise reporting site, helping make the client’s jobs in Customer Service and Inventory Management much more manageable.
Results
Within a year of moving their program to FSI, this entrepreneurial company showed significant growth in sales and brand recognition. They have the attention of major retailers and related industry publications who are feeding their growth with some great PR! The company owners can now focus on their business strategies, developing new product lines, marketing, PR, promotions, trade shows, trunk shows, marts, etc. and do not worry about delivery to market. They have established their relationships with major department stores and plan to pursue growth in that untested area into the future. The company relies heavily on the partnership formed with FSI. We have the experience needed to develop new retail channels and they do not have to worry about meeting those requirements, we have their back! FSI has proven to be a reliable, trusted provider and an important part of the company’s growth strategy.
