In this story
Who is Freedom Furniture?
Freedom Furniture is a major furniture and homewares retailer, with over 58 stores across Australia and New Zealand.
Results at a glance
- Shippit enabled Freedom to overcome shipping limitations by leveraging more carriers, expanding their parcel profile beyond the restrictive two-metre limit.
- This flexibility allowed Freedom to diversify their shipment profiles, and unlock fulfilment operations in New Zealand.
- Shippit’s multi-carrier strategy facilitated a more agile and tailored approach to order fulfilment, significantly improving Freedom’s logistics.
"Shippit has allowed us to streamline our process, and make our pick, pack and dispatch significantly quicker. We’re always looking fulfilling our customer promises and enabling our picking and packers to be better at getting the job done."
What challenges were Freedom experiencing?
Operational limitations in NZ
Freedom faced significant challenges in managing their fulfilment processes in New Zealand. The logistics complexities presented by the geographic separation between the North and South Islands, coupled with a limited freight profile, made efficient shipping a daunting task.
"We were having to send things with local couriers where customer experience was really compromised because we couldn’t give them things like tracking numbers."
Predominantly relying on New Zealand Post, Freedom encountered limitations in handling larger freight. This reliance on local couriers often led to inefficiencies, increased costs, and frequent order cancellations, impacting both operational efficiency and customer satisfaction.
Disconnect between stores
Freedom’s fulfilment processes were highly manual and labour-intensive, involving tasks like measuring cartons, data entry, and manually calling couriers. Managing these tasks for over 50 stores and nearly a hundred dispatch points required a large workforce, which was neither cost-efficient nor sustainable. Relying on single couriers resulted in higher shipping costs and reduced delivery flexibility, negatively impacting customer satisfaction.
This caused disjointed logistics and fulfilment across their Australian and New Zealand stores, leading to coordination challenges, stock management issues, and inconsistent customer experiences.
"Our responsibility as a retailer is to make sure we arm the tool with the right and accurate information and then Shippit does its magic and helps. I can’t imagine having 50 stores and over nearly a hundred vendors or a hundred dispatch points that we have within our business now and having to do all that manually."
The success speaks for itself
Enabling freight freedom in NZ
Shippit allowed Freedom to leverage more carriers which expanded a previously restrictive parcel profile of needing to be less than two metres, which ruled out a majority of their products. Shippit facilitates tailored fulfilment operations and provides the flexibility for how Freedom fulfils orders.
"Shippit has allowed us to be a little bit more agile with our fulfilment operation in New Zealand, specifically around the multi-carrier strategy… Shippit allows us to bring on new couriers, expand our horizons, and get a much more diverse range of profiles that we can actually ship out."
Cost-effective multi-store management
Shippit automated the entire fulfilment process, from measuring cartons to generating consignment labels and calling couriers. Shippit’s API integration enabled dynamic retrieval of shipping costs on product display pages, offering customers the most accurate and competitive delivery options. The integration with Fluent Commerce alongside Freedom’s existing systems, further streamlined operations by allowing seamless picking, packing, and dispatching within a single platform. This flexibility significantly reduced shipping costs and enhanced the overall customer experience.
"Shippit has revolutionised our logistics operations by providing a unified platform that integrates seamlessly with our systems."
Data-driven decision making
Freedom has significantly benefited from Shippit’s robust data and insights dashboards. The detailed information provided through Shippit’s portal, along with the data integrated directly from Shippit, allows Freedom to thoroughly understand their customers’ last-mile experience and manage the cost of doing business more effectively. This comprehensive data analysis supports informed decision-making and strategic planning, ensuring better operational efficiency and optimisation of business costs.
"Being able to delve into the data that Shippit has through their portal gives us the ability to really understand what’s happening with our customers’ last mile experience, and also understand the cost of doing business."
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