Placeholder Image

Subtitles section Play video

  • My name is Cathryn Hondros and I am the Vice President of Systems at Wacoal America. Wacoal

  • America is a premier manufacturer of women intimate apparel and our claim to fame is

  • fit and comfort for women. We have offices at Headquarters in Lynhurst, New Jersey we

  • have showrooms and sales offices in New York City in the apparel district and also manufacturing

  • plants in the Dominican Republic as well as another sales office in London. Approximate

  • employees on our payroll are around 300 and we ship about 3500 cartons a day.

  • I am Karen Mertz, I am Director of ecommerce for Wacoal America and I came on board early

  • this year with the initiative of launching our first direct to consumer website wacoal-america.com.

  • Our web site is set up to both sell direct to consumer and educate women.

  • Wacoal decided to launch a web site basically because for a number of reasons. Number one

  • is when we work with department stores, a department store may or may not carry our

  • whole line so a lady who goes in to purchase our product has a limited choice of what is

  • available to her. The second thing is that we have our own story about our claim to fame

  • being fit and comfort and how our bras satisfy that and satisfy our customer and that may

  • or may not come across our whole story complete or as complete as we would like in department

  • stores. Plus there are always the opportunity that when you are selling direct as opposed

  • to through someone else, you have an opportunity to improve your margins. So those were the

  • drivers of why we wanted to go ahead and develop a website and go direct to consumer.

  • And then we started thinking about what do we want the consumer experience to be?

  • So, we knew we had to provide the consumer packing lists. We knew we had to provide labels

  • for the consumer, we knew we had to provide a lot of different things but we also did not

  • want it to be just a mess of papers in the box that was very confusing to her. So we

  • came up with the concept of wanting to put all of these documents onto a single sheet

  • so that when the customer opened the box, she would have all of her paperwork in one,

  • nice, clean, organized fashion. Once we knew we wanted to do that, we were looking

  • for something that could print a single sheet, we wanted something that we could have labels

  • that we could peel off of that we could use, we wanted something that was not going to

  • rub off and put colors on our light colored garments, so all of that led us to a SATO solution.

  • Ismael Vicens, our Director of Distribution,

  • was at a trade show and he saw this printer and said, this is something we

  • should investigate. So, we began working with SATO at that point. We designed the form

  • that we wanted to do, we figured out how many printers we needed to use to get started,

  • what the configuration was we integrated them into our IBM I-Series system and basically

  • set up the process to print this beautiful, clean sheet on a SATO printer.

  • My name is Ismael Vicens. I am the Director of Distribution for Wacoal America. We run

  • what is called a Picking wave for all of the Wacoal direct orders that have come

  • in over night and when we run the wave, it creates/generates a pick ticket for ever single

  • order. This is what a pick ticket looks like and it has a carton identification which is

  • a UCC128 label. It got the items, the information at

  • the top who it is going to and then it got the items that are in that package listed

  • in picking order, so that when it goes to the pick/pack operator, she will be able to pick

  • each item with her scan gun. What they do is they take their RF gun, they scan the UCC128

  • barcode which is the carton identification, they go to each item and they scan the item

  • to make sure they are picking the correct item. When they have scanned the last item,

  • they are done picking with that particular pick ticket.

  • This is, later on, it is going to be used when they go to pack the garments, they will

  • put it on the inside lip of the carton and when they put it on the inside lid of the

  • carton, they will then be used to scan that UCC128 when they put it on the weigh scale

  • in order to generate the packing slip and the return label.

  • Once they are all picked up they go to a special area where we have our new SATO

  • M10e printers and we line the carton with tissue paper, we place the garments in it

  • and then, as we are filling up the tissue paper, we scan that original pick ticket and

  • that immediately prints out the packing list for the customer, it prints out the shipping

  • label, it provides the customer with a customized return label and we put that information,

  • into the box after taking off the shipping label and affixing to the outside.

  • Once we have done that then that carton will go on our regular UPS or USPS manifest,

  • whatever the customer selected for shipping and we ship it out through our normal shipping

  • processes. When we weigh the carton, this prints out

  • of the SATO printer. We call this the collate sheet, because it includes,

  • one, a packing slip at the top which shows in detail for the customer what we are shipping

  • to them. It has a return label for USPS return. When we pay the return for any returned orders

  • through the United States Postal Service and their merchandize return service, it has a

  • shipping label depending on how the customer has selected to ship the order, we have a

  • shipping label that is either USPS Ground, or UPS Ground, or Next Day Air, Second Day

  • Air but this is used after we pack the carton to put it on the outside of the carton in

  • order to ship with. We have here an extra label right now we are

  • just printing our Wacoal logo on it but in the future it can be used to print gift coupons

  • or some other advertisement, so it is there pending for whenever we need it.

  • On the reverse, what we have our return instructions where if the customer has to

  • return something to us, it asks for the reason for their return giving them some suggestions

  • here, the quantity they are returning and the item they are returning and we use this

  • in our returns handling process so everything is together in one simple sheet when we pack

  • this product and we are ready to close this box, we remove this packet, this shipping

  • label, the rest of the sheet is folded and placed in the carton and it goes out to the

  • customer, and then when the customer receives it, they know exactly what they have and they

  • have instructions in case they need to return it. We ask that they return it in the same

  • carton but even if they do not, they have a label to put on whatever form they decide

  • to return it to us. SATO supplies us with the form and the printer

  • and SATO installed and made sure that it was working. They came over when we first started

  • working with it. Printers obviously were new to us. First time we had dealt with this printer

  • but from day one they came in, they showed us how to use it, how to load it, fine tuned

  • it to work with us and everything keeps clicking away.

  • The solution that we have integrated, I think is a great solution. Today, of course,

  • our web site has just started up but we see it already growing and I think the way we have

  • designed our solution with the integration starting with the front-end system up until

  • we print that final packing slip with our SATO printer. We have set up a solution that

  • is going to scale very nicely. I know that with the printers that we have in place, we

  • can handle many, many times the capacity of what we are doing today and if we grow beyond

  • what the printers that we have on hand can do, I know I can add more printers to that

  • fleet of printers and just continue to grow our capacity to sell on the internet.

My name is Cathryn Hondros and I am the Vice President of Systems at Wacoal America. Wacoal

Subtitles and vocabulary

Click the word to look it up Click the word to find further inforamtion about it