Darice Enhances Warehouse and Distribution Management

Browse the shelves of any major craft, general, grocery or drug retail store around the world and you’ll find arts and crafts supplies from Darice. A family-owned business established in 1954, the company is the largest full line craft wholesaler and distributor based in the United States. It produces more than 80,000 products, including floral, scrapbooking, jewelry, seasonal, wood, wicker and much more.

 

Based in Strongsville, Ohio, just outside of Cleveland, Darice sells its goods through wholesale channels. It also owns and operates a retail chain (Pat Catan’s) and has a thriving web business. Though Darice is a family operation, the company is a major global competitor with a wide variety of products and capabilities. “We have a strong focus on family values, customer service, and innovative product development to keep our products fresh and unique,” says Jim Petkunas, vice president of technology.

 

The company has state-of-the-art facilities to develop, produce and distribute its numerous craft lines. Its warehouse and distribution facilities consist of more than 750,000 square feet, with a 12,000 square foot showroom. Each day Darice receives five to ten trucks with 6,500 cases and processes 3,000 orders and up to 40,000 order lines. The pick accuracy of all outbound orders is 99.99 percent.

 

Darice installed an ERP system with some warehouse management functionality in 2002. But after five years, the solution couldn’t keep pace with product and customer growth and presented several problems that hampered operations. “It was costly to make system adjustments, which didn’t allow us to react swiftly to changing customer requirements for volume, labeling, transportation and picking,” Petkunas says.

 

Other issues with the system included difficulty extracting information and overall performance. The company was also looking to the future — it wanted to strengthen transportation functionality and make other enhancements, but felt the ERP-based warehouse management solution could not scale to future growth. “The overall cost of ownership was becoming too much and the efficiencies we needed just weren’t possible,” says Petkunas. “We also wanted to explore opportunities similar to third party logistics, where we provide distribution services for smaller companies.”

 

Darice leveraged an outside consulting firm to help the company sift through solution providers and develop a functionality criteria list. In addition to selecting a solutions provider that was stable and established, the technology had to support:

 

• Both wholesale and retail fulfillment processes

• Work order functionality

• Domestic and import inbound processing

 

“We reviewed 20 companies, making sure each met our criteria list,” says Petkunas. “From that we narrowed the field to four companies, including Manhattan Associates and the incumbent provider. We measured each with a rating system.”

 

Eventually, the company chose Manhattan SCALE: Supply Chain Architected for Logistics Execution. Darice now employs various SCALE components, including Trading Partner Management. It replaces manual reporting processes with real-time performance data. Labor and Performance Management tools help Darice improve operations and reduce costs. Transportation Execution helps manage logistics activities, including inbound shipments from suppliers and outbound shipments to customers around the globe.

 

“At the end of the day, Manhattan Associates had the functionality, team and resources we needed to lower costs and raise our performance across the supply chain,” Petkunas

says. “They made it easy to picture how the system would scale with our diverse customer needs, and open the door to expanded services.”

Darice installed the solution throughout its facilities, leveraging the rapid deployment capability of Manhattan SCALE. The company gained the flexibility to manage changes in its fulfillment processes and streamline operations. Darice can also react more quickly to changes in transportation, documentation or labeling requirements, and other challenges that might occur. And the technical environment is less expensive to operate, lowering the total cost of ownership. “We’re well positioned to expand our offerings to include seamless distribution services,” says Petkunas. “With Manhattan SCALE, we can broaden our revenue and handle any challenges the future brings.”