Papyrus, a social expression company, recently reported improved inventory accuracy, visibility into stock and Internet retail capabilities with the help of RedPrairie's Warehouse Management Solution (WMS). Headquartered in California, Papyrus has more than 170 stores across the United States and distributes products to more than 6,000 specialty retailers. Since implementing RedPrairie's WMS, Papyrus' inventory accuracy increased from 85 percent to 99.5 percent. Better visibility into inventory allows Papyrus to better manage warehouse space, pay closer attention to seasonal trends and reduce overall inventory.
"In the past, our retail stores have had to rent outside storage space to ensure they had product on hand for holidays and special occasions. RedPrairie has given us better visibility into buying trends and our inventory, and we've become much better at shipping product just-in-time to the stores. So instead of receiving Christmas stock two months before they need it and paying to store the goods, the product arrives at the stores right when it needs to go on the shelves," says Del Duquette, WMS manager, Papyrus.
In October, 2006, Papyrus launched a Web site for shipping direct to consumers, Papyrusonline.com. Duquette says that Papyrus could not have done the e-commerce business without RedPrairie's WMS. "We ship out a unit of 12 cards to stores, but e-commerce buyers only want one. Our space utilization in the warehouse was not efficient. We'd have to move pick locations and move vast amounts of product out. Usually, Christmas stock would have to be moved out of the warehouse around November to make room for Valentine's goods. That would be a big problem for dealing with consumer orders," he explains. But with the insight gained into inventory from RedPrairie, Papyrus can keep that product around longer, know what's selling and is able to leave a lot of product in forward picks. "The visibility is there," says Duquette.
