CLIENT OVERVIEW

Colette, Jennifer and Nicole started Lime Ricki Swimwear in 2007 with the mission to empower every woman, of every age, to feel comfortable and confident.

Their swimwear is cute and comfortable, providing coverage in a variety of styles, colors and patterns. Many variations in every size means something for everyone, it also means a large number of SKUs. When folded and bagged in the warehouse many of these items can look very similar.

As swimwear is seasonal Lime Ricki hires temporary team members to meet increased demand each summer. The combination of difficult to distinguish items and staff who are new to the product line presents a daunting accuracy challenge. As the summer volume rose, so did their shipping error rate.

The team at Lime Ricki cares deeply about their customers and they work hard to make their passion apparent in every part of the customer experience. Customers not receiving what they ordered did not fit their vision. After seeing errors rise with the summer volume they took action.

Lime Ricki added barcode packing verification to their existing workflow with GroovePacker. After the initial setup their team began scanning every item in every order. That was at the beginning of the summer and the season’s results are in… Their packing errors plummeted. They dropped from upwards of 6% the prior season, to 0.001% !

Jennifer kindly agreed to share some details about their fulfillment process and how GroovePacker fits in:

LIME RICKI’S WORKFLOW

First, customers place orders on Amazon and in their Bigcommerce shop at LimeRicki.com. They are then imported into ShipStation, their order manager. In ShipStation orders are reviewed to see what will ship for the day. Some may be held or modified based on customer requests. When the orders to be shipped for the day are ready, they are divided into multiple batches.

Packing slips are then printed by batch and the batches are handed off to the pickers. The “Import Orders” button is clicked in GroovePacker which begins the import of the daily orders. By the time the items are picked the orders will be ready for scanning.

Lime Ricki has added the order number barcode as well as the scan to view barcode to the packing slip template in ShipStation so both barcodes are printed on each packing slip.

The pickers use the packing slip to guide their picking. They place the items for each order in a bin that they carry through the warehouse as they pick. The swimsuits are stacked into the bins and multiple orders are separated by the packing slip.

When this bin is full or the packer is done with the batch they drop the bin off at one of two packing stations. The packing stations utilize existing desktop machines, each outfitted with a USB barcode scanner.

Here the packer scans the packing slip on the top of the stack to cue up the order to be packed in GroovePacker. The packer then pulls each suit from the bin and scans it. GroovePacker verifies that the suit is in the order being packed and the verified items are placed onto a scale. Incorrect picks are identified before making to the scale. When an incorrect item is found the order is placed to the side so the picker can re-pick the correct item.

Once all of the items for an order have been checked and placed on the scale, the Scan to View barcode is used to display the order in Shipstation. The order is displayed and the weight is read from the scale automatically. The shipping label is then generated and applied to the shipment.

Because the barcode is used to display the order in ShipStation immediately after packing and the label is immediately created and adhered to the box, there is no chance of placing the wrong shipping label on a correctly packed package.

With the shipping label applied the order is complete. The next packing slips is then scanned in GroovePacker and the process is repeated.

SO HOW MUCH LONGER DOES IT TAKE TO PACK ORDERS WITHOUT ERRORS?

Jennifer expected that adding packing verification would increase shipping time and that some extra time spent during packing to avoid cost and customer service on the backend would be a fair trade. After putting GroovePacker in place the team was pleasantly surprised to find little if any increase in packing time. It appears that scanning has replaced manual double checking and that the confidence of knowing the items are correct makes it much easier to pack quickly.

HOW DOES THE TEAM FEEL ABOUT USING GROOVEPACKER?

The packers really enjoy how interactive it is. They like the sounds and visual feedback and they find it very easy to work with. Overall the team gives GroovePacker a near perfect rating: 9 out of 10 stars.

Jennifer recalled that there were some items that didn’t have barcodes assigned before implementing GroovePacker. After importing the bulk of the product data from a CSV it took some effort to enter in missing barcodes and assign unique skus to some items. Once the products were complete the team was able to begin scanning right away and the increase in accuracy was immediate.