E-commerce has dramatically changed the way that business markets and moves its products. Locally, it has had a huge impact on Sauder Woodworking over the last 10 years — e-commerce orders have grown from 10 to 60 percent of the company’s orders.
It has changed every aspect of how Sauder Woodworking gets its e-commerce orders to their customers’ homes within two days 90 percent of the time.
Garrett Tinsman, executive vice-president of operations (middle), and Matt Peterson (right), vice-president of fulfillment, explained how the company uses every inch of the 1.4 million square foot Erie Sauder Distribution Center to store nearly 24,000 cartons of product, find and retrieve every item as ordered, prepare it for shipping, and then load it on the right UPS, FedEx or Amazon truck so it arrives at its destination within two days.
In the old days, hundreds of orders from box stores such as Walmart and Target would come in to Sauder every week, and they could take 3 to 7 days to load those orders on trucks by the pallet for delivery.
Now, each order for ready to assemble furniture that individual customers place through Amazon, Wayfair, Target, Walmart and even Sauder’s e-commerce website that arrives by 11:30 a.m. must be retrieved and made ready for the rougher, more frequent handling during shipping by 5:30 p.m. that day.
Orders received after 11:30 a.m. must be out the door and on their way by 5:30 p.m. the next day. Nearly all e-commerce orders are retrieved by one of nine cranes that are programmed to find every product that is stored in the distribution center, which covers the equivalent of 78 football fields.
The item is delivered to one of five packing lines where it is labeled and measured so hard protective corners can be cut and glued to each corner of the box. But, there’s one more step. Every box is then plastic wrapped since e-commerce orders are usually left on the customers’ doorstep regardless of the weather.
About 40 to 60 trucks leave the Sauder distribution center every day and perhaps 15 to 20 of those trucks are filled with e-commerce orders.
The rest go to the big box stores. To guarantee delivery of 90 percent of e-commerce orders within two days, Sauder also has distribution centers in California and Atlanta. The program was arranged by Marc Fruth (left).