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Albi Imports is one of Australia’s premier homeware and giftware importers. Established more then 20 years ago, importing recycled glassware from Spain, Albi Imports has experienced incredible growth in just under a decade. It is now a dominant force in the homeware industry importing a wide range of kitchenware, homeware, glass and ceramics, tabletop and textile designs, from all over the world.

What was the problem?

When Cross Docks Australia first meet with Albi Imports the business had almost tripled in size with a huge increase in their product range and the complexity of their warehousing and fulfilment requirements. This resulted in an increase in work load, demand for space and the need for more sophisticated and detailed work practices.

As a result Albi Imports now faced 2 major constraints in the warehousing and fulfilment side of their business;

• Space: There was no longer room for the stock in the existing premises

• Staff: The capabilities and size of their warehouse staff, could not cope with the tripling in size of orders and products

Additionally there weren’t adequate metrics or processes in place resulting in limited accountability and negligible transparency for customers or indeed even office staff to know where their orders were up to.

In general the whole working environment was extremely reactive and as a result they were only servicing customers at best on a day-to-day basis. Much of the work was done word of mouth and there were no systems or processes in place that tracked orders, tracked inventory or made people accountable for the work that they were performing.

Lost Business/Profit

Measuring loss in business and/or profit is difficult because there is no data to compare to but when Cross Docks took over the warehousing we moved swiftly to cut the backlog of orders jammed in the system and increase efficiency and transparency. A process was established to ensure order information was quickly and efficiently passed between the office staff and the warehouse. This ensured a reliable tracking of orders, inventory and despatch. Cllients could then be sure they were receiving reliable information.

Preparation for Christmas 2004

Albi worked proactively with Cross Docks to establish a new facility that was customised to fit with Albi’s expanding business. Using past and forecasted sales data, Cross Docks designed the warehouse to be customized to fit the current arrangement, yet flexible enough to allow for further growth and changes in product mixes and order complexities.

Milestones Achieved
In just eight weeks after taking on Albi as a client Cross Docks had achieved the following tangible benefits and the warehouse was running like a well-oiled machine:

• Staff levels and activity were appropriately managed with a rostering system that accommodated peak times and staff deployed to suit their skills. By taking over the warehouse staffing, it was one less headache for Albi and Cross Docks were able to manage staff numbers with greater accuracy.
• The warehouse increased order throughput by 50% and decreased order turnaround from 5 day average to less than 2 day average.
• Number of units picked per hour had also increased by 50% with the increased efficiency flowing through to all aspects of the business.
• Moved the stock to a new warehouse with custom-designed layout

Other value-adds to the business was the implementation of a network-based tool that enabled Albi’s customer service team to have real time access to order status information ensuring that they had current information to provide to their clients, ability to top up orders at the last minute and giving valuable information to their clients that gave them a competitive edge in the market place

Albi Imports is just one of Cross Docks Australia’s valued clients. We are constantly working to improve our business processes for our clients, so that they can then pass that value on to their customers.
To find out how Cross Docks Australia can improve the warehousing and logistics side of your business and allow you time to get on with what you do best, call Shan on 0413 745 555.