How Drugstore.com handled a surge in deliveries from promotion on Oprah
When Oprah Winfrey made the Foot Cozys microwavable slippers one of her top consumer picks on her TV show last holiday season, it quickly led to a surge in orders on Drugstore.com, which had arranged to be the preferred shopping site. Good thing Jackie Riggs, Drugstore`s senior director of warehouse operations, had prepared the e-retailer`s distribution center ahead of time. "We were able to flawlessly fill the Foot Cozys orders without backing up any regular orders," she tells InternetRetailer.com.
The surge in Drugstore`s Foot Cozys orders, to about 20,000 for the holiday season, didn`t upset Drugstore`s average time of processing shipments, she adds. Since modifying Drugstore`s warehouse pick-and-pack operations a year ago, the e-retailer has cut by a third--to less than 20 hours--the process that occurs from the time a product is ordered on its web site to the time it`s shipped from the distribution center, Riggs says.
Drugstore operates a warehouse management system from All Points that automatically forwards 8,000-10,000 daily orders from the web site to the distribution center, where order information is attached to individual totes that automatically move on a conveyor belt system to different sections of the warehouse where an order`s products are located. Pickers in each section scan the totes to activate lights on shelves showing the SKUs and location of ordered products. Once totes are filled, they move on to packing areas.
Under that system, Drugstore had an average order-to-shipment time of about 30 hours. But Riggs and Drugstore`s IT staff modified the system to expand to 12 from two the number of locations in the distribution center that could receive orders from the warehouse management system. This enables the company to arrange orders for expected hot-selling products to get processed through the picking areas that operate the fastest and are located closest to packing areas.
Riggs also keeps in constant e-mail contact with merchandising and marketing managers. When alerted about the Oprah promotion, she arranged to have skids full of Foot Cozys stacked in a forward picking area for fastest processing through the pick-and-pack process and on to shipment.
Foot Cozys, which can be either microwaved or put in a freezer to suit a wearer`s comfort needs, are offered by specialty retailer DreamTime. In mentioning the slippers on her show, Winfrey referred viewers to her web site, where they would find a link to DreamTime. But because the DreamTime web site was not equipped to handle the expected surge of Oprah-induced orders, it set up an automated link to Drugstore.com.
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