“Just start with Picqer.
Everything you can do today is one less thing to do tomorrow.”

May 2026 – We visited Thomas from HappyFarmer, a supplier of milking robot and milking parlour parts, at their warehouse in Oirschot. The online store had been growing fast. So fast that operations couldn't keep up with what marketing was bringing in. Thomas's job: make sure growth doesn't grind to a halt. Optimize, automate, and only scale up again once the foundation is solid.

About HappyFarmer

HappyFarmer supplies the parts farmers need to keep their equipment running. With 5,000 products in the online store and 2,000 in stock, the range is wide, and they can ship quickly, helping farmers around the world.

Five people work in the office handling customer contact, purchasing, and order processing. In the warehouse, two people work full-time alongside a handful of part-timers. Thomas is responsible for the operational side of HappyFarmer's growth: removing growing pains and making sure incoming orders can actually be fulfilled. The result: 40% growth in a single year, with just two new colleagues.

"Our growth is mostly driven by marketing, and that's something we can control. We can expand into new markets when we're ready. But as soon as we feel things starting to slow down in the warehouse, we know we need to optimize before we scale again."

The warehouse before Picqer

Orders came in through Shopify and were passed to the ERP system. Everything had to be checked manually before a picklist could be printed and taken to the warehouse.

"You really had to know what the product looked like. You couldn't just put someone on the floor and say: go pick orders. It would turn into chaos immediately."

Products had no fixed location in the warehouse. They were organized by SKU order, both on the picklist and on the shelves. Larger items that didn't fit in the regular pick locations got a different-coloured tray to indicate they were stored elsewhere. Without product photos or prior knowledge, finding anything meant a lot of searching.

Switching to Picqer

Thomas had barely started when he knew things had to change. He gathered the team, and together they decided to find a WMS. He reached out to Picqer, and a few days later the onboarding was done. Then came the groundwork: setting up locations in the warehouse, counting all stock, and booking everything into the right spots. Two months later, they went live.

Getting the foundation right before going live was essential for HappyFarmer. When the day came, they started fresh on a Monday morning with Picqer as their new warehouse system.

A calm warehouse

Where the old process had multiple manual steps, almost everything now runs automatically. An order comes in through Shopify, gets pushed to Picqer automatically, and is processed from there. If something's off with an order, it gets flagged by a separate system and reviewed by a team member.

Every product has a fixed location with a location number in the warehouse. Products are scanned during picking, which means mismatches are a thing of the past. When packing, the shipping label rolls out of the printer automatically and the shipment is registered through Sendcloud. Invoices are handled automatically via Moneybird.

"There's a completely different feeling in the warehouse now. Everyone knows where to go and what to do. It's calm."

The difference is clear. Where 50 picklists in a day used to mean chaos, the team recently worked through 60 picklists in a single morning, without breaking a sweat.

Building on the Picqer API

Thomas also started building on top of the Picqer API. The first step was dashboards for the warehouse floor: how many orders need to be picked, how many are done, how many need to be checked, how many are on the pallet ready to ship, whether there are backorders, and whether any items need to be assembled.

Next came a custom purchasing system. After a few unsuccessful attempts with third-party tools, Thomas decided to build it himself.

"When something goes wrong with someone else's tool, you can complain. When something goes wrong with your own, you have to fix it. That was the biggest hurdle. But it worked out so well that we decided: let's automate everything we can. With the Picqer API, we have more insight than we ever had before."

HappyFarmer keeps refining things over time. Picqer is a solid base, and with the API, they've added a layer on top for custom dashboarding, purchasing, and invoice matching.

Advice for other stores

We close with the question we ask every business owner: what would you tell a store that's in the same position you were?

Thomas doesn't hesitate: "Start with Picqer. You need a WMS to get structure, and that brings peace of mind. Once you're up and running, you can always layer things on top, adjust, optimize, automate. But just start. Everything you can do today is one less thing to do tomorrow."