DC Velocity - September 2012

Cutter & Buck, a Seattle-based company best known for its golf-inspired apparel (it is a preferred provider for the PGA of America), is a major supplier of branded merchandise to corporations: think the golf jacket embroidered with a company logo offered at a corporate event. Until 2010, the company fulfilled its nationwide orders from its 150,000- square-foot distribution center in Renton, Wash. But with much of its corporate clientele located in the eastern United States, the company had difficulty balancing the cost of fulfillment with customers’ demands for expedited service.

The problem wasn’t with merchandise ordered by its college and professional golfer customers, or with its direct-to-consumer and retail customers’ orders; Cutter & Buck handles its own embroidery for those customers, and the company is satisfied that the system works well. The difficulty it faced was meeting the requirement for blanks (unembroidered goods) destined for the East Coast, where 80 percent of its corporate customers are located. Those customers, who manage the embroidery separately, demand fast shipping and low transportation costs.

The challenge lay with Cutter & Buck’s biggest channel,
the corporate channel, says Rick Martinez, the company’s
director of distribution. “The industry standard for the cor-
porate channel,” he says, “is that you will ship the same day
and that either a third-party embroidery house or the cus-
tomer will receive its shipment within two days and that
freight cost will be anywhere from free to minimal.”
With its East Coast business poised for growth, Cutter &
Buck decided it would be better off moving part of its dis-
tribution closer to the customers. The company initially
considered opening its own fulfillment center on the East
Coast but was deterred by the upfront investment required.
Instead, it began searching for a suitable third-party logis-

tics service provider.

Martinez says he had three priorities in choosing a 3PL. For starters, he wanted a partner that already had experience in apparel fulfillment. He also wanted a vendor that operated a multi-client facility, with the ability to leverage its workforce and equipment across several accounts to accommodate shifts in seasonal demand. “I had a background in working with a 3PL with multiple accounts and got to see how good that can be for both parties,” he says.

But the biggest consideration of all was the provider’s technical capabilities. Martinez says his number one requirement was that the third party be able to integrate easily with Cutter & Buck’s existing warehouse management software (WMS), a system supplied by Manhattan Associates, as well as provide tracking for all shipments.

THE RIGHT STUFF

Martinez’s search for the right partner eventually led him to the third-party logistics arm of parcel delivery giant UPS. UPS operates a fulfillment complex in Hebron, Ky., that looked to be a good fit with Cutter & Buck’s requirements. Not only is it a multi-client facility specializing in apparel and footwear, but the Hebron operation would also be able to provide the coverage Cutter & Buck needed on the East Coast. Shipments from the Hebron campus, UPS says, can reach 70 percent of the U.S. population with two-day ground service.

On top of that, UPS would be able to accommodate Cutter & Buck’s technology requirements. The company was able to assure the apparel maker that it could integrate the Manhattan WMS with UPS’s WorldShip shipping application as well as provide the necessary tracking with its Quantum View Manage system.

Cutter & Buck signed an agreement with UPS in the spring of 2010, with the aim of having the Hebron facility begin receiving goods in November of that year and begin shipping in January 2011—a schedule UPS and Cutter & Buck were able to meet.

ABOVE-PAR SERVICE

Today, the golf apparel vendor is one of six customers using Hebron, with 40,000 square feet dedicated to its operation. Should it someday need room for expansion, that will be no problem, says UPS. The Hebron operation overall has three facilities totaling about 2. 2 million square feet.

UPS downloads orders from Cutter & Buck hourly. Under terms of its agreement with the golf apparel maker, it must ship orders received as late as 5 p.m. Pacific the same day. On average, the Hebron facility processes about 250 shipments daily, comprising about 5,000 units.