Start-rite, established in 1792, is the UK’s oldest shoe company. Today, the company has a turnover of £23 million, employs 110 people and has nearly 1,100 different shoe lines serving children from age two to early teens. Specialists in high quality fitted children’s shoes, Start-rite was the first company to make shoes in half-sizes and width fittings for growing feet and the first children’s shoemaker to receive a Royal Warrant.
Start-rite shoes retail through a network of over 400 independent and multiple retailers across the UK and internationally, including John Lewis, Russell & Bromley, A Jones and Clinkards.
PrimaNet runs the fulfilment centre
The company’s Norwich facility is their centre of excellence, controlling the design, development, buying, import and then distribution of completely finished products. Their approach is to source fully-resourced, boxed and ready-to-go footwear from India and the Far East, while keeping design, quality control, engineering and distribution operations managed out of the Norwich facility.
Underpinning this capability is PrimaNet, the modular, enterprise-wide business solution developed specifically for the clothing and footwear industry by Prima Solutions. PrimaNet is the key component of Start-rite’s operations, providing the flexible and responsive platform needed for running a lean, service-oriented and international business. The result? A nimble business with on-demand management information, very efficient automated processes, precision planning, lower costs and improved profitability.
Creating an online business channel
Start-rite do not have their own retail outlets, so the recent move to selling directly to customers through an online channel gave them an additional revenue stream. By making their shoes available to a different type of buyer who did not always want to go through the long established process of taking children into store for fitting and selection, they have not cannibalised existing business through the retail channel, which still provides excellent customer service for the in-store experience. But how did they overcome the fitting issue when selling online?
Because one of the key focuses of the Start-rite brand is the importance of fit for young children’s feet, they spent a long time researching how to offer parents the full range of footwear online.
David Smith is Start-rite’s IT Manager, responsible for implementing business support systems: “We had to come up with some innovative ways to help parents be their child’s favourite expert fitter at home. We have the first transactional website to offer a unique Click’n’Fit service using a digital camera as well as downloadable gauges.”
Web Services enables streamlined Stock Management and Ordering processes
To underpin the transactional website and provide the necessary high levels of service synonymous with their brand, Start-rite wanted all back end processing to be done in real time.
“Most web agencies deal with transactional sites by batch processing, normally overnight, where orders are taken through the day and a file sent for upload into the back office system”, explains David.
“With Prima’s Web Services module, the whole transaction is done in real time – when the customer orders shoes, the system calls the web service to check stock, raise the order and instigate payment. Although web services itself is not new, we believe we are at the forefront of utilising the technology. It provides much simpler stock handling on a first come, first served basis.”
The beauty of the Start-rite operation is that they have one central warehouse which services all customer channels – retailers and online shoppers. This means that they have one set of inventory – 25000 SKUs at any one time to cater for style, colour, size and fit. Styles come in up to 10 colours with 6 width fittings and half sizes as well as full sizes.
“Our system means that we can operate with a very low stock holding of the rarer fits to the extent that we can sell right down to the last pair”, continues David. “Because everything happens in real time, it gives a true picture of stock holding and there is no risk of us selling items that are not actually available. As a business this means less of an admin overhead in having to check stock and potentially disappoint customers. It also means that, if we want to partner with other businesses, we can extend the web service to get systems working together quickly and securely.”
With their PrimaNet back office system, Start-rite found web services relatively easy to implement and integrate, providing them with a flexible and extendable system.
When you open a product record on the website it does a stock check against the stock held on the Order Management system in real time; when you place an order on the site the order is created on the Order Management system in real time, goods are automatically allocated to the order and are ready to be picked without any user intervention and in real time.
The user is kept up to date with the status of the order via the website real time status enquiry and the despatch is confirmed via email to the end user.
Similarly, when a customer logs a return online the return is created on the Order Management system in real time, which means the returns department are aware of what goods are being returned by who and which stock is affected before they are received. This results in improved customer service whilst reducing the overhead of mail order returns.
David comments on the project with Prima: “The web services project with Prima was really successful and worked from day one in terms of integration with the back office system. It works incredibly well and is very straightforward, fast and reliable for the online user.”
Benefits all round
Through PrimaNet and Web Services Start-rite have achieved their objective of creating a new business channel utilising their existing warehouse, workforce and systems. The admin overhead has been vastly reduced through a streamlined system that has a completely automated feed of orders with as little manual intervention as possible, as well as returns processing.
David is delighted with the result: “The customer experience is excellent. Orders placed up to 2pm are despatched the same day. Our returns rate is half that normally expected from online retail. The system is easy to use and it works – everything just happens!”
Retailers also benefit by using the system to check stock online and place customer orders in-store – if they place an order on Saturday, they know it will be despatched to store on Monday.
“As a PrimaNet customer we were fortunate - Prima Solutions are very open and inventive when it comes to helping their customers achieve what they want for their business,” concludes David. “The way our operational systems have helped us to evolve as a business is credit to the way Prima work. They really understand our business and ‘get under the bonnet’ to help us grow and make best use of systems to achieve our business objectives quickly. It’s a nice attitude to have – not all software providers are interested after the initial project. Prima have always been very responsive in the 7 years of our business partnership. It’s no exaggeration to say that without Prima, we couldn’t have evolved our business in the way we have”.