The Background
Hacche Retail provides a variety of books, games and gifts to multiple high street and online retailers.
Offering both in-house designed products, and producing licensed products for several very recognisable brands, Hacche has had a relationship with CML for over ten years, with CML handling Hacche’s distribution into a major UK retailer throughout this period.
Hacche Retail owns the Ginger Fox and Milly & Flynn brands, both well known within the gift, game and pre-school industries.
The Challenge
In the summer of 2018 Hacche looked at its “trade” stock with a view to moving all of this to a single warehousing provider.
Hacche required a provider who could offer end to end visibility of receipts, inventory and orders.
Scope of work included:
- International freight
- Uplift from incumbent provider
- Receipt of direct deliveries
- Storage of goods
- Pre-retail preparation for customer specific requirements
- Picking, preparing and distribution of wholesale and retail orders
The timescales required were rightly ambitious; Hacche required the uplift and all relevant systemic integration to be completed ahead of its key peak trading period, commencing in earnest in early September. With an immediate operational requirement to service Hacche’s customers in the short term, Hacche required a provider that could work seamlessly to establish basic functionality to enable receipt and despatch of stock, before rolling out a fully integrated and improved solution ahead of its upcoming peak.
There was further complexity by virtue of an acceleration of Hacche’s long held plans to update its barcoding and product SKU definitions.
The Solution
CML quickly established the minimum requirements for Hacche to operate on an “out of the box” WMS package, allowing sufficient inventory and order visibility for Hacche, as well as offering a robust operational solution for CML to maintain service levels to Hacche’s customers.
Liaising with Hacche and the incumbent service provider, allowed CML to be in a position to commence a stock uplift within three weeks, accepting stock into CML’s site with full visibility of inventory from go-live.
Concurrently, the CML freight team quickly established the necessary contacts to seamlessly and easily transition the entirety of Hacche’s international freight into CML’s hands, instantly benefitting from consolidation at origin, and economies of scale on freight costs.
Following an initial operating period, where CML successfully uplifted all live stock, accepted new stock lines, and despatched to order for Hacche’s nonpeak custom, CML successfully rolled out a suite of system enhancements and automated integrations, ensuring that Hacche could benefit from the full potential of CML’s operational and systemic capabilities leading into its peak period.
The Results
CML helped to deliver a successful peak for Hacche, hitting Hacche’s requested KPI’s from the very first day with CML uplifting stock on Hacche’s behalf and throughout. The final solution includes a fully customised systems integration and bespoke invoice requirements, to ensure a seamless and tailored service is delivered.
CML continues to work with Hacche on further systemic continuous improvement projects, such as how to continue to simplify and modernise its inventory definitions and barcoding philosophies.
The end to end solution, agility and flexibility that CML is able to offer means CML will continue to be a key strategic partner of Hacche’s moving forward, being their sole logistics provider in the UK.
Ruth Ballinger, Finance Director at Hacche Retail said:
“Deciding to move to a new warehouse is quite a daunting process but CML made it easier and less costly than it might have been.
Agreeing the intake plan and control processes for the new stock confirmed that we had definitely made the correct decision as we now know how much stock we really do have and our customers get what they order. We finally felt we were talking to people who spoke the same language as us.
CML allocated a dedicated project manager to help us through the uplift process and over the past year, we have integrated our systems to reduce workloads and minimise communication errors and we continue to evolve those systems with much success.
CML has also worked with Hacche to meet our bespoke billing requirements in respect of freight and duty. CML has delivered a very high level of freight service to us which is a great relief.
Working with CML has always been seamless due to their capabilities and professionalism making them an important partner in helping us to build our businesss.”
PEAK TRADE STORAGE FOOTPRINT 3,600 PALLETS
YEARLY TRADE INTAKE 500,000 UNITS
YEARLY TRADE DESPATCH 485,000 UNITS
YEARLY TRADE THROUGHPUT 985,000 UNITS
For more information about CML and the services it provides, please visit www.cmlplc.com, email sales@cmlplc.com or call 01455 200 700.
