Relationship Focus: Backcountry.com

Backcountry.com began in 1996 with two guys, a stack of avalanche beacons, and a garage in Park City, Utah. Since then, they’ve grown into a major brand with 5 offices across the globe. Their Christiansburg, Virginia location is home to Backcountry’s second distribution center, which serves the Eastern United States. As a premiere online retailer of outdoor goods, Backcountry is focused on delivering an optimal experience for consumers through efficient order fulfillment and expedited delivery.

 

“We help people fulfill their passions,” said Jeff Carter, Senior Vice President of Global Fulfillment for Backcountry. “We are an outdoor gear retailer, and we sell high-end outdoor products for those people who are passionate about skiing, snowboarding, hiking, climbing, cycling, motorsports. We carry 300,000 SKUs. Opening Virginia has helped our customers get the product faster. The system within the building allows us to ship things quicker out the door. Virginia, for example, has a 7 p.m. cutoff, and since we promise our customers orders the same day, UPS picks up at 10:30, so those guys have a 3.5-hour window to get those customer orders out the door, and the system along with our WMS system, allows for that flexibility in meeting that goal.”

 

Hytrol and the integration partner worked with Backcountry to develop a unique solution capable of providing an increase in their logistic footprint and fulfillment space, while reducing processing costs and shipping expenses. The system is comprised of several customized applications, one of which provides a noteworthy approach to the traditional “pick and pass” order fulfillment process. This solution utilizes an overhead conveyor spine to vertically sort product to the three levels of the pick module. This allows the main conveyor line to transport customer-order totes only, while replenishment and empty totes are transported directly to their specified zone.

---

  By approaching the sortation process from a three-dimensional perspective, the integration partner was able to develop a cost-effective and efficient system with optimal throughput. The layout of each pick module is also significantly reduced, allowing for a greater efficiency of labor and less movement for employees.

 

“We built a WMS in a flow management system that would work very well for online retailers and direct consumer shipping,” said Carter. “In our picking mezzanine, walk time is critical; reducing the amount of walk time employees have in the process throughout the day is key to driving down costs, so we built that into our distribution center. Our zones are 50 percent less than the size of the zones in Salt Lake, making it so the employees aren’t walking as much. “

“The E24™ technology was great; it allowed us to open this building quicker. The energy savings you gain from it is consistent with the culture of Backcountry. ”  – Jeff Carter, SVP of Global Fulfillment

 

“We had high expectations coming into this building. We had used Hytrol in the past; we had used it in our Salt Lake City facility. It’s who this particular integration partner uses and recommends, so we were pretty comfortable going with Hytrol in this facility. We’ve been very happy with the performance of the system, and in fact today we were just walking through talking with the maintenance technician, and he was telling us about the classes Hytrol puts on and was very excited and happy to have participated in those classes.” – Jeff Carter, SVP of Global Fulfillment