Swiss retailer increases productivity by 40%

Online Swiss beauty vendor haar-shop.ch AG significantly improved order fulfilment productivity by over 40% and increased its warehouse utilisation rate by more than one-third by using Descartes’ cloud-based ecommerce warehouse management solution (WMS).

As haar-shop.ch’s online business grew, it quickly became clear that manual fulfilment processes needed to be modernised. Its existing inventory management system did not offer advanced warehouse management capabilities such as “chaotic warehousing,” which speeds the put away process and maximises warehouse space utilisation.

Employee processing and warehouse capacity quickly reached their limits. “We had sorted the shelves by brand, so every employee was required to memorise the product location in the warehouse,” said Markus Stoller, Head of IT at haar-shop.ch. “Our warehouse operations were inefficient as a result, and we couldn’t implement multi-order picking to improve employee productivity.”

With the Descartes solution, haar-shop.ch not only optimised the use of warehouse space, but also significantly increased shipping speed. “Our goals were exceeded. We gained over 35% storage space and increased productivity in order fulfilment by more than 40%,” Stoller explained.

“By automating fulfilment processes, manual steps are reduced, which initiated massive changes in daily routines, but definitely paid off quickly. In fact, the benefits we had aimed for were achieved in only two weeks!”

Part of Descartes’ ecommerce solution suite, the Descartes Ecommerce WMS solution helps direct-to-consumer brands, ecommerce retailers, and traditional retailers rapidly scale in combination with providing a remarkable customer experience. The solution helps ensure that clients can ship on time, ship the right items, do not oversell existing inventory, and have full transparency into warehouse operations.

The Descartes Ecommerce WMS solution is pre-integrated to major e-commerce platforms like Shopify, Magento or Shopware to accelerate implementation and time to value. Order information is automatically available to be executed via mobile-driven multi-order pick-and-pack strategies and then fed into parcel shipment systems.

“The Descartes solution can help haar-shop.ch’s warehouse logistics processes scale along with their online store’s sales growth. We’re very proud to be able to support haar-shop.ch in offering its customers an outstanding shopping and delivery experience,” said Dirk Haschke, VP & General Manager, Ecommerce at Descartes. “For companies with eCommerce warehouse operations, excellence in order fulfilment is a key element for sustainable, successful business growth.”