DC Velocity - December 2017

BY DAVID MALONEY, CHIEF EDITOR

ORDER FULFILLMENT
Special Report

AS THE VENERABLE FOOTWEAR RETAILER CLARKS can attest, shoes are not the easiest products to distribute. For one thing, each style comes in a wide range of sizes, widths, and colors. For another, shoes and boots are often bulky. So it helps to have sophisticated software and handling systems to help navigate the complexities. That’s exactly what Clarks Americas now has at its new DC in Hanover, Pa.

British-based Clarks was founded in England in 1825 when brothers Cyrus and James Clark made their first pair of sheepskin slippers. Today, it has grown into a global corporation that includes the Bostonian and Hanover brands.

It was the Hanover Shoe acquisition in the late 1970s that first brought Clarks to the small Pennsylvania town of the same name, where the company already had a factory and distribution center. Shoe production has since moved overseas, but distribution for all of Clarks in the Americas remains in Hanover today, albeit with some modifications. The company has seen steady growth since that acquisition—growth that eventually would lead to capacity limitations that would take more than just polish to address.

“We were outgrowing the walls there,” recalls Ed Smith, project manager and facilities engineer. “We knew we could not get by for long. Plus, we needed to invest in new technologies to replace the old technologies we had that were simply worn out.”

HANOVER HOLDOVER

Clarks did not want to abandon Hanover for a location closer to interstate highways. It had a long history there, as well as an experienced and dependable work force. Hanover is also a short drive from the Port of Baltimore, through which most of its imports arrive. As it happened, Clarks found sufficient land to build directly across the street from the former DC.

Planning for the new facility began more than a decade ago, but the Great Recession put the project on hold. In many ways, the delay was fortuitous, as a notable portion of the company’s business has since shifted to the direct-to-consum-er channel. When work on the facility resumed, Clarks changed gears and designed a building that can handle multichannel distribution from a shared inventory pool. Today, this includes distribution to more than 300 Clarks-branded stores, a wholesale channel, and e-commerce orders.

Another benefit of starting over was that it gave the company the opportunity to “reverse engineer” the design process. That is, it allowed the Clarks team to determine what technologies would best support the flow of goods and then design a facility around them. After evaluating a number of material handling solutions, the Clarks managers decided to go with automated systems from Knapp.

FEET FEAT

The facility, which went live in May 2014, serves all of North and South America. It boasts Knapp’s OSR Shuttle goods-to-person picking system and a large automated storage and retrieval system (AS/RS) that stores more than half a million cases of shoes. Knapp handled the design and integration, supplied the conveyors and sortation systems, and installed the warehouse management system (WMS)