Fishing Tackle and Bait

250% growth drives massive warehouse transformation

250% Sales Increase at Fishing Tackle & Bait Leads to Investment in WMS

Background

David Burleigh bought the business that is now known as Fishing Tackle & Bait just over 10 years ago. In the very early days, it was a brick and mortar retail store with only a small handful of staff. With an eye to modernisation and bringing the business to a broader audience, David took his trade digital with a marketplace strategy on eBay and Amazon, followed by their first ecommerce site, built on Shopify. They gained some impressive initial traction, expanding the team and implementing an all-in-one, multichannel system to manage stock, EPOS and shipping requirements.

Early tech improvements

Managing inventory across retail stores and ecommerce sites can be awkward without the right systems and processes. In the early days, Fishing Tackle & Bait fell foul of trying to pick inventory from the retail store itself. This lead to overselling, inaccurate stock levels, and disappointed customers who had their online order items pinched by an in-store customer! To counteract this and make admin across the retail operation more streamlined, they worked closely with our partner IRP Commerce to develop some high-grade eBay and Amazon integrations that actually allowed them to consolidate all their orders into one platform. This laid the foundation for the next phase of growth.

Massive order volume increase

When COVID hit, Fishing Tackle & Bait saw an incredible sales spike of over 250%. Quite simply, the physical work they had to undertake, alongside some cumbersome and demanding manual processes, meant that their entire fulfillment operation became overwhelmed. Their lack of scalability was exposed, and it was clear to David that further investments into technology, process, and know-how were needed. Leadership wanted to bring some form of automation into the business and deskill warehouse work. Going into a transformation of this nature, they believed that shipping 100s of orders same-day was a total impossibility, both practically and financially. However, with the massive uptick in sales came both increased customer demands and more cash flow, which was the perfect storm to catalyse the business into action.

Relying on industry expertise to solve the big issues

David and the team contacted their now long-term solution partner IRP Commerce, which had previously integrated Peoplevox into another customer. They were kind enough to recommend our solution to Fishing Tackle & Bait as a “best-in-breed” warehouse management system for ecommerce. Whilst mindful of keeping fixed overheads to a minimum, as a small but growing business, the discovery and evaluation process demonstrated that Peoplevox would be able to address the key problem areas for the warehouse and fulfillment side of the operation:

• Total stock accuracy was needed between the warehouse, ecommerce website and marketplace channels, to avoid overselling.
• Picking and packing processes had to be made much more efficient to handle the higher volume of orders per day.
• For the busiest times of year, the warehouse tasks needed to be deskilled and easy to learn, allowing new or temporary staff members to start working productively straightaway.

Implementing Peoplevox and onboarding the team at Fishing Tackle & Bait

Some preconceptions about buying a SaaS platform included being left to configure everything yourself with little support. Fortunately, that’s not the Peoplevox way! We took Fishing Tackle & Bait through a comprehensive 12-week, fully remote onboarding, implementation, and training process. It ensured that everyone was confident the platform would work without stress from day one of go-live. David explained: “We were 100% comfortable with the system and how to use it by the time we were ready to go live. This has, without doubt, been the smoothest deployment of a system we have ever achieved as a company. Everyone involved at IRP, Peoplevox, and our staff pulled it off with dedication and resolve!

The implementation process was amazingly focused and meticulous with Krzysztof really becoming part of our team for the 12 weeks, fully understanding our business, the requirements, and our unique circumstances and challenges. This made me feel like we 100% made the best choice and Peoplevox 100% understood ecommerce fulfillment.

Customer reviews take positive uplift

David admitted that in the past, before Peoplevox, Fishing Tackle & Bait had struggled to deliver to their customers on a consistent basis, and that the logistics side of the business was letting them down. However, the reviews that are coming in since installing the WMS are incredibly positive about exactly that, the logistics-powered customer experience.

We can be proud of our logistics operation for the first time, taking control of our customers’ delivery experiences. This wouldn’t have been possible without Peoplevox. We’re excited for the future of our business in the fast paced ecommerce world.

David Burleigh
Director, Fishing Tackle & Bait

Vertical: Hobbies & Lifestyle
Software Integrated: IRP Commerce, Shipster
Region: UK
Company Size: Scale Up

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