Vertical
Gymwear
Software Integrated
Shopify Plus
Region
UK & Ireland
Company Size
Enterprise
Enabling Gymshark to ship every order on time, without fail
About Gymshark
Gymshark was established in 2012 by Ben Francis whilst still at school, and has grown from a screen printing business in a garage, into one of the fastest growing and most recognisable brands in fitness. The Bromsgrove, Worcestershire-based online retailer currently employs 85 staff, rising to approximately 120 at peak times, and fulfills customer orders globally from its 10,000 sq.ft warehouse. With around 5,000 SKUs and plans for continued rapid expansion, a move to a new 100,000 sq.ft warehouse facility is now necessary and will take place in August 2017.
Gymshark is a rapidly expanding ecommerce fitness apparel and accessories brand and ecommerce retailer. Along with a very high social media profile, the company has the distinction of making the No.1 slot in the prestigious 2016 Sunday Times Virgin Fast Track 100, achieving 193% compound sales growth over three consecutive years. But this was just a warm up. By close of FY 2017 at the end of July, Gymshark’s revenues will have rocketed to £43 Million, compared to just under £13 Million in FY 2016.
Faced with managing such rapid expansion, Gymshark took the decision to review its existing IT systems with Financial Director, Chris Perrins, evaluating Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) and Warehouse Management System (WMS) needs, and the IT Team led by IT Director, Seb Mills, taking responsibility for ecommerce software. The joint venture between Finance and IT culminated in replatforming to the new Shopify Plus enterprise level solution, integrated with Peoplevox’s WMS.
The Challenge
At the time of Chris joining Gymshark in April 2015, the business was already averaging around 500 orders per day, peaking at 20,000 on Black Friday 2015. By early 2016, order volumes had jumped to 2,000 – 3,000 per day. The significant ongoing increases in average order volumes and large surges in demand at peak times, combined with growing concerns over the stability of the existing back end systems, highlighted the need for a total back end systems overhaul.”
The Solution
In early 2016, Chris began the search for the optimum ecommerce fulfillment solution. Having met Peoplevox’s consultants to discuss requirements and following a thorough ‘smoke-test’ of the software, he was convinced he had found the right WMS platform.
However, the key factor in making the final decision to invest in the Peoplevox WMS was its ability to easily integrate with the newly launched Shopify Plus enterprise level platform.
Furthermore, by using Peoplevox’s OpenDespatch API, the WMS offered the advantage of integrating with the Scurri Carrier Management software that Chris was also planning on using.
In September 2016 the new integrated ecommerce and warehouse fulfillment solution went live.
From the outset, Gymshark could see they had deployed an ecommerce solution capable of matching the immediate and future needs of their high volume business. The integrated Shopify Plus with Peoplevox WMS platform quickly improved the warehouse team’s agility and ability to keep pace with Gymshark’s accelerating order and fulfillment demands on a day to day basis.
But it was the success of Gymshark’s Black Friday 2016 campaign which really demonstrated the scale, power and speed that the combined solution offered. It effortlessly supported the picking and packing of 30,000 thousand orders on the day, and a further 10,000 per day during the run up.
By the end of the company’s extended six day Black Friday sale period, Gymshark had cleared 90,000 orders. In contrast, the previous year’s Black Friday using the old systems had taken ten days to clear just 20,000 orders.
“Peoplevox’s consultants were brilliantly responsive and their willingness to go the extra mile in addressing our specific technical issues made a big difference to the speed and smoothness of the whole implementation.”
Chris Perrins
Financial Director
Gymshark
The Results
Since going live in September 2016, the Shopify Plus with Peoplevox WMS combination has delivered a number of key benefits:
- Stability: Supporting rapid growth without compromising customer experience
- Agility: Faster and more accurate order processing, picking, packing and shipping. 90,000 orders cleared in six days over the Black Friday 2016 sale period
- Scalability: Flexibility to quickly flex warehouse operations to match changing order volumes, from a typical 4,000 – 5,000 per day to 30,000 during peak periods
“Using Peoplevox with Shopify Plus has ensured we are no longer hindered or constrained by the limits of our back end systems as previously experienced. At any given time we know exactly the number of orders we have and what is in stock, avoiding the potential for overselling.
As a high velocity ecommerce retailer, the new solution has totally met our requirements by enabling the flexibility to quickly scale our warehouse operations to cope with accelerating order volumes, and always be sure of shipping on time. This has supported our growth strategy and improved overall customer experience.
The ease of use of the Peoplevox WMS has also played an important part, especially in allowing temporary staff to come up to speed in a matter of hours, with the minimum of training.”
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