Learn how leading flip flop brand Havaianas, under lifestyle retail giant Terry SA, leveraged LOCAD’s cutting-edge fulfillment solutions to provide faster delivery and boost customer satisfaction.
Key Metrics
- 24 order dispatch and faster shipping
- Contributed positive increase in customer happiness
- Full view of the fulfillment journey through the LOCAD Control Tower
“The thing about Terry SA is that it’s not afraid to invest in progressive ideas,” says Christine Brunermer, E-commerce Lead at lifestyle-creation company Terry SA.
Before the pandemic, anything related to e-commerce felt secondary for most businesses. When brick-and-mortar stores remained the go-to shopping venue for most customers, online stores and marketplaces only felt like extensions or “something that was just good to have”, as Brunermer describes it. But when lockdowns threw online shopping into sharp focus, e-commerce did not only become an essential channel, but it also became the most important one.
Havaianas (Terry SA Inc) is one of the few forward-thinking retail leaders that were already e-commerce-enabled even before the market shift. However, Brunermer shared that e-commerce only comprised a small percentage of sales pre-pandemic. But once they took the leap and delved into online retailing in full force, they discovered a new array of opportunities to serve their loyal customers.
Managing National Flip Flop Month
The 6.6 flash sale marked the beginning of a new approach to e-commerce for Havaianas. While their first double-digit marketplace sale had its own fair share of challenges, the brand saw the potential to scale and transform it into their primary sales channel.
Brunermer shared that despite the exciting growth opportunities the flash sale offered, it took them 15 to 30 days to deliver an order. As their customers grew impatient for their orders – especially in a time where next-day delivery is the norm – requests for order cancellations increased.
Back then, the team behind Havaianas was managing end-to-end fulfillment on their own. Having had their own warehouse, they also had to lead, teach, and manage the people picking and packing orders which became a time-consuming job for the e-commerce team who already had their hands full. “Workforce management affected turnaround time most especially during a pandemic,” Brunermer expounded. Managing manpower and workforce productivity became a difficult task in the pandemic and as a result, it impacted lead time to deliver orders.
As they continuously improved their systems and processes, they were able to shrink the delivery period to 10-12 days. But Brunermer and her team knew there was still a better, faster, and more productive solution that they enlisted the help of fulfillment partner LOCAD.
“Now with LOCAD, we are able to dispatch orders within 24 hours and deliver super fast shipping to our customers,” said Brunermer, describing their 8.8 flash sale experience.
The Cost Efficiencies of a Fulfillment Partner
“We always say: we cannot manage what we cannot measure,” said Brunermer. With metrics being the defining factor of e-commerce success, data analytics was one of Terry SA’s biggest considerations in outsourcing fulfillment.
Brunermer shared that prior to LOCAD, a challenge they continuously faced was the inconsistency between what their customers see on their e-commerce store and what they physically held in their warehouse. These discrepancies were a result of having separate systems – one for the web store, one to manage the warehouse inventory, and many more – and eventually caused increasing out-of-stock orders and growing order return rates. In turn, items were oversold, and customer complaints demanded manual intervention of Havaianas’ customer care team. Brunermer explained that pre-pandemic, this was a manageable task. But since the pandemic gave rise to the volume of their sales, manual intervention became impossible.
Brunermer knew the fragility of the system they had in place could not continue, and that they had to look for better and more sustainable solutions.
And since switching to LOCAD, what Brunermer and her team at Havaianas used to do manually became automated. “It has made the cost we put in very efficient,” she said, pointing to the high productivity and efficiency rate of LOCAD. “From paying for our own real estate, managing that real estate, hiring people to cover X square meters of that real estate – all of that has been lifted from us and now we are only looking at the cost per unit.”
From a financial and operational perspective, Brunermer described that the decision to leave their e-commerce fulfillment to LOCAD did not only save them costs but also valuable time. “And time is always equivalent to the cost to us,” she said.
With LOCAD, Brunermer and her e-commerce team no longer worry about discrepancies in inventory and stock. “Right now, what our customers see [in] our e-commerce store is consistent [with] what we physically have in our warehouse,” she said. “Our out-of-stock orders had really gone down.”
The full integration of LOCAD’s Control Tower to their own system has allowed them to view data that are retrofitted to the metrics Brunermer and her team are looking for. “LOCAD’s system is super thoughtful, and it’s so connected to what operations really need to see,” she said. “There’s always that data integrity.”
For Havaianas, a data-driven mindset is essential. “The way we think of e-commerce is in metrics,” said Brunermer. “The beauty of the integration and the way that things are run by LOCAD is that [it’s] very data-driven – it’s so seamless and very, very in tune with how we do things.”
She also shared that the LOCAD Control Tower being streamlined has also helped them understand and look at the crucial data in real-time. “Because of the system LOCAD has, in a way, we are now able to analyze our data faster because the system [they have] is not only accurate but gives us [an] automated view of the reports.”
Stronger Fulfillment = Happier Customers
“Since Locad, customer happiness has really gone up,” shared Brunermer. After careful deliberation and analysis of their customer care tickets since switching to Locad, she and her team were pleased to see the large and positive impact of outsourced fulfillment on their customers and feedback.
“Our loyal customers of Terry and Havaianas and all of them are saying that our operations now have gone really way way way better,” said Brunermer. “If you have these loyal customers who are willing to wait 30 days for their package, imagine the joy they have when they receive their package in 3 days’ time because Locad is able to fulfill and prepare them in 24 hours.”
Looking back, Brunermer shared how supported she and her team felt from the very beginning. “With Locad, we were able to get all the information we needed which were key takeaways from the first meeting within 24 hours,” she recalled. “And that’s super important to us because we were running after a deadline within the first three days of meeting the Locad team.”
With both end-to-end fulfillment and workforce management off their plate, Brunermer was happy to report that she and her team are able to focus on planning for the future. “With Locad supporting us in the people management side of things, our operations team have now been upskilled and are now more focused on project management.”
As e-commerce continues to evolve at a faster pace, Havaianas feels confident in how well the system of Locad is working for them. “[Locad’s] system has a way of purging information and showing exactly what we have so it’s super transparent and credible and at the same time, it’s very custom and very much in tune with what the retailers actually need.”
Want to take your next step towards growing your business like Terry SA? Experience hassle-free e-commerce fulfillment with LOCAD!
