When the COVID-19 pandemic triggered a surge of growth for Unimart’s ecommerce business in 2020, its warehouse quickly spun out of control. Backlogged orders piled on the floor, employees were stressed to the point of tears, and the founder’s whole family helped pick orders every weekend just to keep the business from failing. Then, in August 2020, Unimart launched Descartes Peoplevox™ warehouse management system (WMS) with Brightpearl retail operating system. The company gained peace of mind, control over the warehouse, and a stable tech stack that could support continual growth.

Challenge: Rapid growth, unfulfillled orders, unhappy customers

In August of 2020, before implementing Descartes Peoplevox, Unimart was receiving an average of 250-300 orders per day. With only a handful of warehouse workers, the company struggled to pick orders fast enough to meet shipping deadlines. Orders were months behind schedule, and customers called every day to complain and ask when their items would arrive. The company had outgrown its old fulfilllment process and needed help, fast.

Solution: Greater warehouse control and scalability

After launching Descartes Peoplevox with Brightpearl retail operating system, Unimart immediately started clearing backlogged orders. Within two to three days, they shipped approximately 3,000 orders and caught up. As a result, the company experienced relief from the piles of items cluttering the warehouse, and their customers finally received their orders.

Next, Unimart leveraged Descartes Peoplevox’s organizational tools to rearrange warehouse inventory. According to Jimenez, “We felt we needed to take control of our warehouse rather than the other way around. With Peoplevox, everything is tracked. It creates a trail for every single item which makes the team accountable for their actions and reduces errors.” Unimart used the new WMS to group items by size rather than by type. Not only did the reorganization save space, but it also reduced average order fulfilllment time by 54%, down from 48 hours to 22 hours per order.

In addition, the company streamlined order processing and fulfilllment workflows to ensure every order was picked correctly and shipped on time, every time. Brightpearl’s integration with Unimart’s webstores automatically pulled all the orders into one place and organized them. Then, the Brightpearl/Descartes Peoplevox integration fed all the orders into the WMS. From there, warehouse workers began using guided pick paths to eliminate picking errors and greatly increase efficiency. The new warehouse process resulted in happy customers, sustainable growth, and helped contribute to a 90% increase in revenue from 2020 to 2022 as average order value increased.

By building a scalable technology stack, Unimart positioned itself to continue growing, using tech as a competitive advantage. Jimenez stated, “Now we’re able to handle volume, and that’s one of the reasons why we’ve been able to grow in this market relative to other players. Because what happens is, competitors break down. They cannot handle the volume [of orders] because they don’t have the right tools. But we do.”

With Descartes Peoplevox and Brightpearl to support its growth strategy, Unimart intends to expand its footprint into Central America in the coming year.