Conceive, design and build a new distribution center that meets the order fulfillment requirements of Southern Living At HOME® (SLAH), the fastest-growing party plan company in the history of direct sales.

Custom Marketing Services (CMS), a third-party warehouse operator headquartered in Calera, AL, was utilizing a 10,000 sq. ft. facility to satisfy SLAH’s order fulfillment requirements. With exponential growth on the horizon, CMS needed to expand and streamline its processes, and do so in quick order. FORTE needed to transform CMS’s original operations, which included very labor-intensive methods involving paper ticket order picking, shopping carts, manual quality control, and manual packing/shipping processes. The new distribution operations plan required a high-speed, automated facility capable of handling an increase in throughput in excess of 500 percent over a three-year period. Once the new building was constructed, the facility was operational in less than six months.

FORTE studied SLAH’s business operations and analyzed current and projected sales and order profile data. FORTE then designed a new 500,000 sq. ft. automated distribution center with expandable material handling systems. FORTE also assisted in the selection and implementation of a WMS program to handle SLAH’s current and future supply chain needs.

• A highly intensive split case picking and packing operation utilizes pick-to-light technology.
• The facility was designed to easily expand operations to accommodate aggressive growth.
• Extensive packing and quality audit operations ensure the highest standards in order accuracy and presentation.

• Increased order fulfillment accuracy to nearly 100 percent
• Reduced labor by nearly 30 percent while order volume increased nearly 50 percent
• Improved turnaround time from a high of over three weeks to less than one week
• Raised customer service levels, which alleviated constraints on SLAH's call center

“We are very satisfied with the way FORTE has brought us to our current optimized state… increased capacity, near 100 percent order accuracy, reduction in labor.”

- President, Custom Marketing Services