Lesson Learned: Focus on Your Strengths
Problem: Your catalog company’s management team is stretched too thin to concentrate on order-taking, pick/pack/ship, call center operations and returns management.
Solution: Outsource the duties to a specialist.
FrenchToast.com, a Web and print cataloger of school uniforms, did just this in 2000 when it partnered with NewRoads, an outsource fulfillment provider. Today, NewRoads handles the Dayton, NJ-based cataloger’s order-taking, shipping, customer service/call center operations and returns management. In all, New Roads handles fulfillment for about 30 catalogers.
“Outsourcing allows us to do what we do best: sales, marketing and product development,” says Michael Sutton, president of FrenchToast.com, which is the direct marketing arm of Lollytogs, a company that has been making school uniforms since 1958.
French Toast, the catalog division, was established in 1999, and for about a year, Sutton and his staff tried to do all of the fulfillment tasks in-house. “That was until we realized it took too much time—from a systems aspect—to focus on order-management and other customer-service issues. I decided that if we were going to grow as a company, we’d have to focus primarily on the product development, sales and marketing aspects of the business,” he says. “We needed to find a partner with the expertise and the systems in place to run the day-to-day operations for us.”
Another factor in Sutton’s decision to outsource fulfillment: The school uniform business is seasonal—most orders come in during the summer months. So Sutton was reluctant to invest in too much fulfillment-related infrastructure that probably would be under-utilized nine months of the year.
Once he decided to outsource fulfillment, he did a thorough search of available companies and services. “We wanted a company that had decades’ worth of industry experience in call center operations, warehousing and receiving,” he recalls. “When we met with NewRoads, we could see they really understood fulfillment and had extensive experience in apparel in particular. They know, for example, how to receive apparel, steam it, handle returns, allocate sufficient hanger space in the warehouse and keep the products dust-free.”
David Himes, senior vice president of business process solutions for NewRoads, says catalogers looking to outsource also should consider scalability. “If your catalog has a heavy fourth quarter, look for an outsourcer who can flex up to handle your volume in addition to that from its other clients’ fourth quarters.”
Sutton hedges on the question of whether outsourcing has saved his catalog money. “Many executives fail to see the full cost of owning the systems necessary to run a top-notch, order-management operation,” he says.
“The costs in maintenance and human resources are astronomical,” he continues. “I look at the industry standards on a per-order basis, and I’m very happy with the results of outsourcing.”
That’s not the only thing making Sutton smile these days. Recently, FrenchToast.com was named by the Wall Street Journal’s Catalog Critic columnist as the best of its class of uniform retailers, and Sutton credits outsourcing as a significant contributor to the honor.
“NewRoads has saved us so much time in trial and error. We can pick up the phone and talk with someone there who has been down the road a bit and knows what works.”
