eCommerce Baby Products eTailer Optimises Stock Management

eCommerce Baby Products eTailer Optimises Stock Management

The team behind the former Mothercare Ireland franchise has launched a new online store, Kaliedy.com, selling baby and toddler goods. The new company offers Ireland’s largest range of feeding products, as well as baby essentials, nursery items and toys. It will be the exclusive stockist of the Early Learning Centre toys in Ireland and sell its own brand of products, including travel accessories. The new eCommerce site will feature leading international brands such as Maxi Cosi, Chico and Silver Cross as well as Irish brands.
 

3PL eCommerce Online – The Business

• New Start-up Operation
• eCommerce Business Model
• Online Baby, Nursery & Toy eTailer
• Third-Party Logistics Order Fulfilment

eCOMMERCE BABY PRODUCTS – SITUATION & CHALLENGES

In June 2020 Mothercare Ireland indicated it was closing its 14 branches and laying off all its staff, after it was placed into liquidation due to the financial impact of the Covid-19 pandemic. It had been started in 1998 by businessman David Ward, after he secured the franchise in Ireland.

 
 
Now siblings Laura, Ben and Johnny Ward, have established the new web-based store, along with other members of the former Mothercare Ireland head-office team. These include those who were responsible for buying, customer service and design.

The Kaliedy team recognised that the traditional bricks-and-mortar retail model – built around retail parks and high street store locations – was in decline. And that the primary growth area is around the business-to-consumer (B2C) eCommerce model.
 
 
“eCommerce success is driven by a number of key elements. Firstly, the right mix of products and brands, then a good website that guarantees an excellent customer shopping experience.”

“After that it’s about a good logistics engine. This is about both the service providers you choose and good integrated backend IT systems. Selected systems need to provide the business and the customer with robust end-to-end transaction visibility. It must also automate the transaction with the least amount of back-office administration”. Ben Ward, Head of Digital, Kaliedy
 
Market Research identified that customers wanted a fast turnaround time, and that competitors were not providing this. A key business requirement from the onset was being able to offer a next business day delivery promise for Ireland and Northern Ireland on all orders.

The decision was made early to outsource the warehousing, and pick-and-pack operation to a specialist third-party logistics provider (3PL). With the warehousing operation being operated at a remote geographic location, Kaliedy needed to see live stock information and have this information interface seamlessly with its web front-end so customers could view stock details and availability, live.

3PL and Third-Party Systems Integrations

Central to the success of this strategy was the selection of a 3PL vendor whose warehouse management software (WMS) could reliably and seamlessly integrate with the company’s web front-end and back-end online payments and courier systems.

Business-critical was that the right stock availability be presented in real-time so orders are not accepted unless stock is available. If this happens it can lead to considerable administration effort as well as, brand-damaging, poor customer experience.

The selected WMS also needed to integrate with Kaliedy’s back-end online payments system so when the transaction was paid online this would convert the reserved stock in a customer’s online shopping basket to a live order ready for picking by the 3PL partner.

“The online business model was only going to be accelerated with
Covid-19 as more and more people opted for home deliveries”
Ben Ward, Head of Digital, Kaliedy

 
It is important that delivery times are clearly understood and that customers can follow their order journey at all stages of the user experience: picked, packed, despatched, out-for-delivery and delivered. To achieve this the WMS needed to interface with the courier system.

Providing the customer with real-time visibility also greatly reduces back-office administration effort in responding to customer queries.
 

“Our chosen 3PL provider was already using
ProWMS which we saw as a functionally-rich,
multi-tenanted application and so could be configured to
our exact needs and interfaced with the systems we required.”
Ben Ward, Head of Digital, Kaliedy

DELIVERABLES & RESULTS

The 3PL provider chosen was using ProWMS Warehouse Management Software, a full multi- tenanted application and as such could be configured to exacting Kaliedy requirements. ProWMS had the capability to provide a live stock-feed of product availability to the website.

Customers visiting Kaliedy’s website are able to see the product details and the live stock quantities. When a customer places an item in their online shopping basket the website sends a message to ProWMS to place the selected item on an allocated status against this customer transaction in real-time. This prevents another customer choosing the same stock item.

“The link to the courier system also needed to be real-time. ProWMS provides high levels of accuracy by ensuring each item is scanned to a unique Box ID per order.”
Mark Kelly, DevOps Director, Principal Logistics Technologies
 
 
In-DEX WMS was also integrated with the back-end online payments system. This system validates the card details entered, contacts the issuing bank and processes the payment. Once the funds are cleared the online payments system sends ProWMS a message which changes the order status from allocated into a live order to pick on the RF unit.

Order Picking Optimised

At the 3PL warehouse this order would appear as an order awaiting picking on the RF operator’s unit. Orders can be grouped by route, prioritised, or simply presented sequentially to operators.
 

Delivery Tracking
 
Kaliedy had selected one of Ireland’s leading next day nationwide courier companies to handle deliveries. To provide an end-to-end customer journey an interface was required to the courier companies’ system so that customers could track their orders.

When the order appears on the stock pickers’ RF unit, they can select the number of labels required for that order on the hand-held unit.

We then:

• Dynamically communicate with the carrier’s labelling system in real-time
• Send the carrier the Kaliedy web order number, customer name, address, etc.
• On receipt, the courier system allocates a unique courier tracking number, courier depot and route number
• A file is then returned with the courier barcoded box or delivery label
• Pickers produce the courier address label in seconds via their wearable wireless label printers
• The courier tracking number is also interfaced with the website – so the customer can then track their delivery from one location on the Kaliedy website

 
The operator applies the label onto the box into which they are going to pick the item. Operators can pick multiple orders at any one time. ProWMS directs the operator along the optimised walk sequence.

When the picker arrives at the location the barcode of the required item(s) is scanned into the box label. If a picker, for whatever reason, needs another label (as, perhaps, they can’t fit everything into a box) they can simply repeat the process.

Results Summary

“The Principal Logistics Technologies team’s knowledge and business experience proved invaluable in the delivery of this project, and to a tight timeframe. Mark and his team understood our specific requirements from the outset and was able to specify and deliver on these a lot faster than we had envisaged, delivering us an excellent solution.” Ben Ward, Head of Digital, Kaliedy