Global football retailer Classic Football Shirts has more than tripled warehouse productivity as it scales its e-commerce operation to meet growing international demand.
The business, which generates more than £30 million in annual revenue and serves customers in over 130 countries, has spent five years working with Manchester shipping software specialist Shipster to transform its fulfilment and logistics processes, enabling staff to handle hundreds more orders every day.
Managing a collection of more than one million individual football shirts and memorabilia items presents significant logistical challenges, particularly when shipping demand can surge around major tournaments, product launches and viral moments.
The latest development has seen Shipster integrate a Logopak automated packing and labelling system into the retailer’s warehouse operation, reducing packing times for eligible orders from minutes to seconds.
The wider partnership has also involved developing bespoke shipping processes, from routing and labelling to supporting CFS’ Mystery Box range and international deliveries.
The investment was put to the test during the World Cup, when orders dispatched across June and July rose 101% year on year. Almost two-thirds of orders (64%) were automatically packed during the tournament.
Brandon Evans, outbound operations manager at Classic Football Shirts, said: ‘This World Cup put our fulfilment operation under sustained pressure and Shipster made a massive difference. Without the automation and flexibility we have built into the operation with Shipster, we simply wouldn’t have been able to dispatch anywhere near the volume of orders we achieved and still maintain the speed and service our customers expect.’
Tony Cheetham, founder and CEO of Shipster, said: ‘Classic Football Shirts has some unique operational challenges. It manages more than one million individual products, ships to customers around the world and regularly experiences sudden peaks in demand driven by tournaments, product launches and viral moments.
‘Over the last five years, we have worked closely with the team to build a highly automated and increasingly sophisticated fulfilment operation that gives CFS the speed and flexibility to adapt as demand changes.’