Case Study
Common Challenges, Uncommon Solutions
Uncommon Goods has been selling artisan products by catalog and ecommerce for more than 23 years. ITS Logistics enables the company to handle seasonal swings, fragile product, opening new fulfillment centers, two-day delivery expectations and technology integrations that led to 49% growth – and ready for more.
Challenge
The distinct nature of Uncommon Goods products small batch, extremely seasonal, multi-size, variable pick and pack – makes finding a fulfillment partner both important and difficult. Volumes at peak can swing more than 3,000%.
Our customers come to us for our creatively designed, unique products, but we realized that we needed to be faster and more increasingly efficient to remain competitive vs. other retail options. We needed a custom solution to efficiently scale to adjust to the drastic seasonality swings of our business, especially for the holiday season peak.
Solution
ITS Logistics has been the right partner for Uncommon Goods for nearly four years. The ITS team has worked on initiatives to reduce delivery time, has increased inbound vendor efficiency, and most importantly for Uncommon Goods, has been willing to work with the massive swings experienced by the retailer.
“We worked closely with the Uncommon Goods team to engineer a custom technology and pick and pack process to handle the extreme seasonality of their business,” said Ryan Martin, president of asset operations for ITS. The technology stack allows rapid training and deployment of resources to support violent increases in volume.
To enable two-day delivery in the lower 48, Uncommon Goods and ITS opened a west coast distribution center in Reno, NV. Part of the expansion included a technology integration that sends customers an immediate notification at shipment through final delivery.
Improving efficiency and network optimization for Uncommon Goods, ITS established a west coast vendor shipment consolidation point for east-coast-bound product, reducing inbound transportation costs.
Our partnership allows us to have a much shorter time in transit to our customers in the west, which improves customer experience and lowers transportation costs. This also allows us take some of the pressure of a very sharp holiday peak season off of our Brooklyn operation.
Results
The Uncommon Goods and ITS teams have worked together closely to deliver improvements in planning, forecasting, operational scalability, and technology in the Uncommon Goods supply chain. So much so, the company saw a 49% increase in units shipped by ITS in 2022 over 2021.
Uncommon Goods is preparing for 2023, a larger selection of SKUs and inventory volumes. The company counts on ITS’s commitment to continuous improvement to find ways to innovate and add efficiency. Finding ways to innovate the pick-and-pack process, add new technology and expand both footprint and labor operations allows ITS to expand alongside Uncommon Goods.