Fulfillment Technologies

“Our WMS was custom-built through five years of tweaking,” C&C co-owner Bart Calame says. “Nothing came off the shelf. We built the whole thing from scratch. We wanted a system perfectly customized to our needs. We incorporated lots of scalability into the system as well, because our volume is expanding all the time.”

• While the company has not grown to the point of justifying the deployment of advanced picking technologies, C&C's custom-made WMS is well integrated into the all the nooks and crannies of the operation, including the retail store.

• The system is programmed with a homemade electronic data interface. The function comes with all the benefits of EDI while allowing C&C to retain ownership and control of purchasing. The EDI portion governs replenishment.

• The WMS tracks specific SKUs based upon buying patterns and seasonality, and purchase orders are cut monthly, weekly, or biweekly on a case-by-case basis. According to Calame, the system is skewed to keep stock levels at 98.5% at all times.