2020 was a year of disruption. Retailers and brands needed to expand their fulfillment operations to manage the extreme growth in eCommerce volumes. Setting up a new fulfillment operation can take months or even years. But with Flexe Fulfillment, it’s different.
Learn how DeFili Solutions, a warehouse provider based in Southern California, worked with Flexe to stand up fulfillment operations for one of the nation’s largest retailers in just three weeks. Through the Flexe Logistics Platform, DeFili successfully managed high-volume eCommerce needs without long-term investments and a fully automated facility—a game-changer for their business.
Featured speakers:
Nunzio DeFilippis - CEO of DeFili Solutions
Glenn McCrary - Senior Product Manager at Flexe
Jerome Clinton - 3PL Operations Manager at DeFili Solutions
The following transcript has been edited for clarity and readability.
Nunzio DeFilippis:
DeFili Solutions is a family-run business started by my father, Michael DeFilippis, in 1989. The biggest challenges that our customers are facing today are massive delays and bottlenecks everywhere. By the time the goods reach our facility, the pressure is on.
This [project] was a really unique situation and a huge opportunity for our organization and for Flexe. One of the largest retailers in the world needed to set up a 100,000-square-foot facility in 3 weeks. And it was in the middle of the peak of the pandemic.
Glenn McCrary:
Since COVID, there's been a huge increase in online retail. And Flexe sees more and more companies coming to us to handle large volumes of eComm very quickly—setting up a site in two to three weeks sometimes.
Jerome Clinton:
Typically, we're three months in on a standard new customer setup by the time we get everything rolling and processing freight—versus working with Flexe. I think we bid on the project in May, and we were shipping orders in June. So part of that was the Flexe technology. It's super user-friendly. The majority of our workers were temps, and within a day, they were processing orders.
Nunzio:
Without the Flexe technology, honestly, it would have taken us months to set up. We did it in weeks.
Without the Flexe technology, honestly, it would have taken us months to set up. We did it in weeks.
Glenn:
Traditionally, when a retailer does high volume sortable eComm, they’re doing it out of a large, fully-automated facility with conveyance, tilt tray sorters, and put walls. So the real challenge for Flexe was to find a way to do that without any of that automation.
Jerome:
The Flexe technology that was provided for us to track customer SLAs, orders, and ship dates for the customer was instrumental in us succeeding.
The Flexe dashboard allows us to monitor customer SLAs in addition to hourly output, which lets us plan for the following day's labor. In addition to the tech support, their on-site support was fantastic. They sent a team of experts out to not only train but to monitor each step of the way.
Our partnership with Flexe has taken us into new territory. We process thousands upon thousands of orders per day for one of the largest retailers in the world. Because of that, our confidence is boosted and we feel we can handle anything here at DeFili Solutions.
Nunzio:
The reason why our partnership with Flexe is so special is because our values are aligned. We both want to make sure that the customer succeeds. And when we're doing that together, we're unstoppable.
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