“We’ve saved ten thousand euros”

About Shops4YouOnline

Together with his wife, Ruud van Basten runs eight webshops under Shops4YouOnline, with hairandbeautyonline.com being the largest. Ten to twelve people work for them daily, they are growing rapidly, but not too fast. ‘If we grow too quickly, we’ll lose control; the organization has to be able to keep up with the growth.’

Since they started using Picqer, the warehouse at Shops4YouOnline has become much quieter. No more piles of orders waiting to be shipped, no unnecessary running around the warehouse, and no more fiddling with pen and paper—they’re fully automated. ‘There’s clarity and everything is neatly organized.’

Brick-and-mortar store

Ruud van Basten originally worked as a detective until 2009. When friends went their separate ways and the online store they ran together was on the verge of failing, Ruud decided to change direction. He quit his job and breathed new life into the webshop. ‘I started at home, packing parcels on the ironing board. A year later, we moved to a building in Nijkerk. I did everything alone—the accounting, answering calls, packing. Sometimes my son helped, and my wife joined after work. Occasionally, a returnee from the municipality would help with packing parcels or answering the phone.’ In 2011, they opened a brick-and-mortar store in Nijkerk. ‘Sometimes people want to go somewhere and see how the hair dryer actually looks.’

Boring warehouse guy

At a Lightspeed event in October 2015, Ruud accidentally attended a presentation by Casper Bakker from Picqer. ‘I was actually going to attend another lecture, but it was full. So, I thought I’d go to the boring warehouse guy.’ But Casper’s story triggered him. ‘He explained that most webshops make 80% of their money from just 20% of their products. Those should be at the front of the warehouse. We had everything sorted alphabetically. Because we were so busy and always pushing forward, we never thought about it.’ The more Casper spoke, the clearer it became to Ruud that Shops4YouOnline had lost its way. ‘He talked about stacks of bins in the warehouse, and how many entrepreneurs have no idea how to organize them. That was exactly the case for us.’

Lost revenue

Ruud had heard about warehouse management before but was afraid it would be too expensive and lead to lost revenue. ‘I was dreading the implementation, the time and effort it would take to reorganize everything.’ After the presentation about Picqer, he knew: no more waiting, they were going to do it now. He briefly considered other, more extensive tools from larger companies. ‘But they come with a higher price tag. It’s like a car with a thousand buttons. Do you really need all that as a small business? For us, the answer was no.’

More customer-friendly

Before using Picqer, new orders and inventory management were chaotic. They would print out a list showing what had been sold, but no one knew exactly how much more to order. ‘We had leftovers of some products, while others were out of stock. When a customer placed an order, we first had to go downstairs to check the stock. Now, with just a click in Picqer, I can see how much stock we have, and the inventory is linked to the webshop. Everything is much clearer, more efficient, and more customer-friendly.’

Significant savings

The results are impressive. Previously, it took them nine to eleven minutes to process an order; now they’re done in two to three minutes. ‘Before we started using Picqer, employees would prepare seven parcels per hour. Now they do 25, and we pick 100 orders in twenty minutes.’ This means significant savings, about 10,000 euros, for example, on unnecessary stock, estimates Ruud. ‘And that doesn’t even include the time saved and the higher customer satisfaction.’

Engaged

Thanks to an intern who could graduate on the implementation of Picqer, the process went much faster than expected. Within three months, they were ready with the preparations, such as standardizing the product codes across all webshops. After that, the switch took just one day. Ruud likes that Picqer works every day to refine the system, and that the entrepreneurs behind it are so engaged. ‘Nothing is too much for them; the system is their baby, and they want it to work.’

Looking back, Ruud says Shops4YouOnline started with Picqer at least a year too late. ‘What you invest in Picqer, you get back. I tell everyone: if you’re still hesitating, you’re already too late.’