terms of making the customer experience a positive one.”
THE GOAL: BETTER FULFILLMENT SERVICE
The company fills its direct-to-consumer orders from a cav-
ernous 2. 2 million-square-foot distribution center (DC) in
Groveport, Ohio. The Groveport DC was built in 1994 for
direct order fulfillment for Eddie Bauer and the Spiegel cat-
alog. (The company also handles store fulfillment from the
Ohio site, using an entirely separate workflow process from
its direct-to-consumer operation.) In addition to
Groveport, Eddie Bauer operates a 100,000-square-foot
DC in Vaughan, Ontario, that serves its stores in
Canada.
The Groveport DC fulfills an average of 15,000
direct-to-consumer orders each day—a total of
30,000 to 45,000 units, as orders average two to
three items each. “During our peak season, these
volumes exceed 80,000 orders or 200,000 units,
which demands a high degree of automation,”
Venegas says. The facility includes four high-
speed tilt tray sorters, 13 carton sorters, 18
miles of conveyor, and three 60-foot-high
narrow-aisle carton storage bays served by
Raymond and Cleco stockpicker cranes.
With all this automated equipment, Eddie
Bauer already had in place the robust mate-
rial handling capability to meet Venegas’
goal of six-day-a-week, same-day order ful-
fillment for the majority of its orders. But
making it work did require adjustments to
work schedules. “Most importantly, we had
to communicate directly with our associ-
ates on how they would be impacted,”
Venegas says. “We needed their help. We
were not designing this as a premium or
overtime shift. We’ve redesigned our work-
week to have seven-day-a-week coverage.
Our associates understand the competitive
environment and they have been big sup-
porters. We’ve implemented a revised work
schedule that does not incur an incremental
spend for overtime and now have two shifts
that work throughout the week.”
CARRIER COLLABORATION
The change in fulfillment strategy also required
some changes on the part of Eddie Bauer’s carrier, FedEx, which handles all direct-to-customer
shipments. Venegas, while not disclosing Eddie
“We worked with our core carrier to ensure they are on
board and ready to go in terms of their services and coordination of their dispatch times from our facility,” he says.
