How American Tall Scaled Their Fulfillment Operations by 400% with ShipHero

Introduction

Finding high-quality, well-tailored men’s clothing online can be a tall order—especially for men who are 6’3” or taller. So demand was really high when American Tall, a men’s apparel brand for tall men, launched their direct-to-consumer ecommerce site. American Tall is a direct-to-consumer lifestyle brand for tall (and extra tall) men. They create quality, tailored clothing and accessories for men between 6’3”–7’1” with a Medium to XXL tall build.

When the company first began operations, the not-so-small family business relished picking and packing each order by hand. They even enclosed personalized ‘thank you’ cards with each order to make the unboxing experience feel as personal as possible. But as their business grew, keeping up with order fulfillment became a challenge.

Manually keeping tabs on inventory levels, order information, and shipping information all on an Excel spreadsheet became impossible tasks to manage.

Challenges

Scaling fulfillment with rapid business growth

• American Tall needed a warehouse management solution
• Free software solutions weren’t scalable with rapid growth
• Too many SKUs made outsourcing shipping to a 3PL unfeasible

“It got to the point where we were spending hours writing thank-you cards each night. It also became more and more challenging to pick the orders,” explains Jake Rajsky, Vice President at American Tall. “We’d have items in stock and people were buying them, but there were none on the shelves for our pickers. Our warehouse manager was spending her entire day pulling down skid after skid to replenish the shelves and we couldn’t get ahead of it.”

To ease the workload, they decided to adopt free batch picking software. But they soon realized that the solution wasn’t scalable with the volume of orders they were receiving.

“The software wasn’t scalable with our business’s growth. It only allowed us to queue up a hundred orders at a time. And there was no way we could do it by hand anymore,” Jake says.They considered outsourcing shipping to a 3PL, but realized that wasn’t feasible either.

“We couldn’t outsource shipping to a 3PL. We have way too many SKUs— 3x or 4x what most retailers have. It would have been impossible for us to pay the crazy-high rates,” Jake says.With order fulfillment falling further and further behind, American Tall needed a solution that was scalable and affordable. That’s what led them to ShipHero.

Solution

ShipHero for fulfillment & shipping

American Tall demoed a number of different warehouse management software solutions, but ShipHero stood out when Jake began using ShipHero to implement more efficient pick and pack workflows. “Out of all the different solutions we tried and tested, ShipHero was the most intuitive,” Jake says. “Picking and packing works well with ShipHero. It’s way more efficient than we were used to, and it forced us to start thinking bigger,” he explains.

American Tall used to only have barcodes on cartons, not individual hang tags. Having ShipHero pushed them to request barcodes on individual items, create a detailed map of their warehouse, and add barcodes to each bay location. With these changes, American Tall started using ShipHero’s Multi-Item Batch, which made it easy to pick multiple orders with different quantities of products into unique tote bags.

“Multi-Item Batch picking and packing was huge. Now, each picker could walk through the warehouse once and get what they needed. I can’t imagine doing it one at a time,” Jake says. “Sending out the wrong item is a waste of money and it damages your brand identity. Now, if a picker pulls the wrong item, scanning the barcode gives them an error message. With Multi-Item Batch, everything’s more accurate.”

It was Shopify-approved with numerous positive reviews. It offered plenty of different features that would help American Tall streamline warehouse management. Its user interface was clean, simple, and intuitive.

“Before, we might have had 1,000 units of size ‘medium’ somewhere in the warehouse, but we had no way of knowing how many were available to pickers. Maybe only 20 of those were on the shelf and the other 980 were packed away on skids in overstock,” Jake explains.“As of two months ago, we can finally track everything. With Dynamic Slotting, we can see our pick-face—anything up to six feet—and the three rows of racking above are for overstock. It’s very easy to see what’s stored on each skid, pull it down, and transfer it from that location to an active one so our pickers can access it,” he adds.

“Picking and packing works well with ShipHero. It’s way more efficient than we were used to, and it forced us to start thinking bigger.”

Results

Software that scaled with 4x growth

• Streamlined inventory management for efficient pick & pack workflows
• Multi-Item Batch to simplify picking multiple orders with different item quantities
• Dynamic slotting to track how much inventory is in stock in each location
• Warehouse management software scalable with 400% business growth
• 275% increase in picking efficiency
• Mis-shipments reduced by half

In less than two years, American Tall’s orders increased by over 400%. They now receive thousands of orders every month and they’re even busier during holiday seasons. ShipHero helped them keep up with order fulfillment while their business grew—and it continues scaling with them. Even better, Jake says that ShipHero has helped them improve picking efficiency by over 275% and reduce picking errors and misshipments in the process.

“We realized there was no way we’d be able to continue filling orders one year down the road at the rate we were growing. We were excited by the growth, but we needed a software solution like ShipHero,” he says.

Having a barcode on each product results in fewer mispicks, improved order accuracy, and more satisfied customers. More recently, American Tall has also been using ShipHero to improve inventory management. ShipHero’s support team helped them implement Dynamic Slotting to track how many units of stock they have in each location in their warehouse.

“Speaking of efficiency, there’s no contest. Manually, two people used to pick around 80 orders per day. With ShipHero, two people can pick over 300. We also reduced misshipments by half, if not more,” Jake says.

More efficient warehouse management has helped them deliver a better experience to their end users. Next, American Tall is planning to expand its use of ShipHero to receive Purchase Orders. This extra functionality will allow them to navigate Purchase Orders on their devices, print barcodes, create flexible location flows, and more.

“Our inventory system used to be Shopify. There was no editing orders or customization. Now, our customer service agents can edit orders, add items, and provide our customers with an overall better ecommerce experience,” he says.

“If you’re planning to scale up your business, you need a solution like this. ShipHero’s customer service is great and they’ve helped make us incredibly efficient,” Jake says.Your fulfillment solution should scale with your growing business. Let’s talk.