Tech Tactics: Psycho Bunny Leverages In-Store Inventory with Fluent Commerce
Tech Tactics is Sourcing Journal's series with brands and technology companies to discuss their latest innovations.
A couple years ago, fashion brand Psycho Bunny was experiencing significant growth, with a double-digit rise in e-commerce sales and a rapidly expanding store footprint. But amid this success, the label discovered its technology stack couldn't meet the demands of the ballooning business.
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Remedying this, Psycho Bunny decided to undergo a large-scale technology transformation just a couple weeks before Black Friday and Cyber Monday in 2022, which included launching on Fluent Commerce's order management system as well as replacing its warehouse management system. In a session at the National Retail Federation's Big Show, the brand's vice president of IT, data and analytics and PMO Jean-Aymeri de Magistris noted that while he does not suggest following suit with a widespread change all at once, for Psycho Bunny, the venture worked out. 'We saw value immediately,' he said. 'We were able to leverage the store inventory, catch up to our sales, beat our plans, tremendous success.'
One of the issues that Psycho Bunny was looking to solve was a lack of inventory accuracy, which caused multiple fulfillment hiccups. In some cases, the brand was taking orders for merchandise that was not available. Inventory errors also led to split shipments, which raised shipping costs.
Fluent Commerce specializes in distributed order management, with solutions that help companies improve their inventory accuracy and optimize fulfillment. After adopting this OMS, Psycho Bunny has been able to reduce canceled orders by 93 percent. Per a case study on their partnership, if an order was canceled incorrectly and the merchandise existed in the system, the customer service team previously needed to manually re-enter the order for the consumer. Now, this process is automated, freeing up customer service team's time.
Additionally, Psycho Bunny's split shipments rates have halved from 35 to 40 percent to just 17 percent. The brand is also getting orders to consumers faster, at an average of four days instead of six.
Although the label is based in Canada, it does not have a distribution center in its home country. Because of this, Psycho Bunny wanted to be able to better leverage the inventory sitting in its Canadian stores for online fulfillment, which it has been able to do with Fluent. Fulfilling from stores has been a 'huge asset,' and De Magistris said it is helping Psycho Bunny catch up to the competition. The store teams are on board, and the brand has established an 'in-store fulfillment culture.' Unlocking omnichannel fulfillment has been a boon for the company, leading to a 30 percent sales boost.
As De Magistris explained, Psycho Bunny is too big for an 'off-the-shelf' technology solution, but too small for something completely custom. It needed an in-between offering that allowed for some tweaks. With Fluent Commerce, the brand has been able to make adjustments that fit its operations, such as creating fulfillment logic rules that default to shipping 100 percent of Canadian orders from a store.
Psycho Bunny can modify and test different rules as demand fluctuates. For instance, it can put more emphasis on allocating toward the stores during a shopping event like Black Friday or focus more on e-commerce in other times.
Although Fluent Commerce's capabilities were an attraction, De Magistris stressed the importance of also finding a cultural fit with a technology partner. 'We really aligned a lot with the philosophy, the way we develop and the way we push out software or we ship products, and that's ultimately what led us to Fluent,' said De Magistris.
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