Vertical
Apparel & Fashion
Software Integrated
Shopify, Comestri & Starshipit
Region
APAC
Company Size
Scale Up
Fitness royalty playing on a global scale
Lorna Jane is one of the most recognisable Aussie brands around. The company has gone from strength to strength, starting up as a small niche market entrant serving the female gym-goers of the local area. Now, just a few years later, it emerges as a key player in the global landscape for activewear, selling across the Asia Pacific and European regions.
Theirs is a complex and sophisticated logistics operation, with both ecommerce and physical retail presence in multiple markets. A China-based distribution centre runs as the core operating hub for all direct-to-store fulfilllment and replenishment, and this works alongside three regional warehouse facilities for ecommerce orders serving local markets. These are the three warehouses that have Peoplevox running as their direct-to-consumer WMS. Separating out the operational landscape of the business in this way allows Lorna Jane to divide out focus areas with purpose-built solutions, rather than trying to combine efforts with a clunky all-in-one set up.
Getting Started
That’s the setup now, but let’s wind back the clock and look at what Lorna Jane was in the market for when it came to a purpose-built system for their ecommerce fulfilllment centres. Lorna Jane had a very basic analogue system running their warehouses and needed a digital, tech-first approach to transform their work and allow them to grow. The company wanted a system to drive increased productivity, measure those improvements, and track progress in the short and longer terms.
Key areas of focus were:
- Is it scalable to see us through numerous years of growth?
- Is it a global solution, a platform that will work in all the markets we are in now as well as future regions?
- Are we building a strategic partnership with a vendor for long-term shared growth, rather than just installing some software like a one-off transaction?
“The hardest challenge is building out the architecture of it all, both physically and system wise.
Since putting in Peoplevox, the whole thing has really found its legs in the last 12 months. We found the harmony and balance with all the right players to make it come together.”
Danny Hancock
Global Operations Director
Lorna Jane
Results with Peoplevox in place:
- “Phenomenal, streamlined inbound goods receipt.” The system drives productivity and accountability within the team, ensuring the most crucial part of the inventory management process, Goods-In, is carried out with 100% accuracy. This leads to perfect fulfilllment processes downstream through pick and pack.
- Optimised picking. Putting in Peoplevox gave the warehouse a 35% increase in picking productivity straight out of the gate. Before, team members walked 10-15 aisles for every pick run; now, they only walk 2 or 3 to collect the same amount of orders/items.
- Visibility into a global operation. While Ops Director Danny can only be in one place at one time, with multiple DCs running worldwide, Peoplevox allows him to monitor and report on activity everywhere. The large teams in place are empowered to carry out their day-to-day tasks, with management able to check in at both micro and macro-level performance.
- “Never miss a beat.” With vast increases in productivity and efficiency, the team removes a legacy issue of not fulfillling orders within specific delivery windows and missing deadlines for customer promises. On top of this, they can handle more order volume with fewer people, which proves particularly helpful when staff are on split shifts or need to remain distanced.
- Scaling up with ease. Each warehouse around the world is seeing more order volume month over month, and in particular, the New Zealand warehouse is going through a massive growth phase. Lorna Jane can scale up the operation without re-writing any processes or changing how it works. It’s now a simple case of adding additional licenses, turning on additional barcode scanners, and training up the new staff, which, due to the system’s ease of use, is something they can do in 10 minutes.
- Tight integration with Starshipit for global warehouse and shipping capability. Starshipit is a crucial partner in the tech stack for Lorna Jane – you can read up on Starshipit’s work with Lorna Jane on their website.
Looking ahead, Danny and the team are excited about the future of the business and feel safe that the tech stack they now have in place will see them through for the long run. Danny confidently states: “I know that we could double in size quite easily and still be very sound within the system.”
“Last year, I remember on Black Friday, everyone was walking out of the warehouse, sweating, totally wrecked. We were all exhausted, and I’d been running around the office asking all team members, regardless of department, to come down and help in the warehouse as we were so overwhelmed. Then this year, things felt odd. In fact, I was starting to second-guess the numbers… are we really that far ahead and on target? The newfound productivity we gained meant the operation was a breeze. Honestly, it was an absolute pleasure, and all the hard work we’d put in to get to this point had come to fruition at our busiest time. We cruised through and still pumped out significantly more orders than the previous year. We’d had the nightmares before, but this time, it was kinda fun!”