At the end of 2022, BaubleBar nished its peak season, enjoying a massive spike in sales within its made- to-order program. This was also the company’s rst holiday season using the SnapFul ll solution. “We have a lot of key learnings to help us optimize this portion of our business and we rely on the SnapFul l team to help us tweak and realign our warehouse management solution to keep up with this spike in demand,” Mejia says. BaubleBar has also seen dramatic improvement in its key performance indicators (KPIs) for picking operations in its business-to-consumer nished goods and business-to-business ful llment rates. For instance, the single unit order pick rate jumped from about one per minute to 2.5 per minute. “This alone helped us drastically improve pick rates during the height of the holiday season,” Mejia says. BaubleBar plans to work with the SnapFul l team to make further improvements to its made-to-order business, and to build out additional features to help improve its business-to- business operations, Mejia says.
are found both online and in major retailers, including Bloomingdales, Nordstrom, and others. When BaubleBar initially connected with SnapFul l, a provider of warehouse management solutions, it was looking for a warehouse solution that would be both “out of the box” or have native capabilities that it could adapt into BaubleBar’s ful llment strategy, while also being exible enough to allow BaubleBar to custom-build processes for different aspects of its business, says Maritza Mejia, senior operations and customer care director. She and her colleagues found that many of SnapFul l’s native capabilities t seamlessly into BaubleBar’s business-to-consumer strategy, while also allowing the company to streamline some work ows for its business-to-business operations; these had been a source of growing pains with an older system. BaubleBar currently uses SnapFul l’s warehouse management system for its domestic ful llment and inventory control needs, including both business- to-business transactions, such as those with retailers or partners like the NFL, and its business-to-consumer ful llment. CONSULTATIVE APPROACH SnapFul l helps customers across a range of industries manage inventory and ful llment, says Charles Thompson, project manager with Synergy North America Inc., the company behind SnapFul l and other solutions. SnapFul l uses a consultative approach and brainstormed with BaubleBar on how to modify the system for the company’s made-to-order business line. This includes jewelry, phone cases, and other items personalized with customer names and initials and in other ways. For the rst time, employees are able to pick unique items and track individual purchase orders, inventory, and order ful llment through the warehouse management system. As it was working on the SnapFul l implementation, BaubleBar also re-platformed its front-end website and
added an enterprise resource planning (ERP) solution. Implementing several systems at once brings both pros and cons. “In some respects, it’s easier because you’re starting with a clean slate, but it’s also risky,” Thompson says. Normally, when a company launches one system, everyone can focus there, and be ready to jump in and address any challenges. With this, everyone involved had to be mindful of all the solutions being implemented. “Through the whole design session, we had to make sure nothing was missed, and understand how one component may have knock-on effects to other components,” he says. “The SnapFul l team was thoughtful and mindful of our unique business needs,” Mejia says. BaubleBar was able to book working sessions with its project manager and team members to discuss and work through the various issues prompted by implementing three systems. It helped that BaubleBar had super users engaged from start. By the time the solution went live, they had been using the product for months in a testing capacity and were very familiar with it.
WHAT’S UP WITH 3PL WAREHOUSING? Labor, Capacity, and Technology Trends 3PLs performing omnichannel fulfillment saw greater success related to order volume and profitability growth as compared to other 3PLs, according to the third annual Third-Party Logistics Warehouse Benchmark Report from Extensiv (formerly 3PL Central). Additional key takeaways from the 2022 report include: An increasing number of 3PLs grew volume and profitability. 3PLs fared even better than in past years, despite concerns about inflation, more significant labor constraints, and global uncertainty. 91% of 3PLs grew order volumes in 2022, up from 85% the year prior. 81% claimed higher profits this year, a slight increase from 79% last year. Continued on page 120
118 Inbound Logistics • January 2023
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