Fishbowl Inventory > Case Studies > The Mending Shed Cut the Time It Spends Picking 100 Orders from 2 Hours to 15 Minutes and Working on POS from 6 Hours to 1

The Mending Shed Cut the Time It Spends Picking 100 Orders from 2 Hours to 15 Minutes and Working on POS from 6 Hours to 1

Customer Company Size

SME

Region

America

Country

United States

Product

Fishbowl Warehouse

Tech Stack

Inventory Management Software

Implementation Scale

Enterprise-wide Deployment

Impact Metrics

Productivity Improvements
Cost Savings

Technology Category

Functional Applications - Inventory Management Systems

Applicable Industries

Consumer Goods

Applicable Functions

Warehouse & Inventory Management

Use Cases

Inventory Management

Services

Software Design & Engineering Services

About The Customer

The Mending Shed was founded in 1971 as a small repair shop fixing a variety of items from furniture to home appliances. Over the years, the company has expanded its capacity and now offers repair service on dozens of products. In 2001, they opened an online store, which has become an integral part of their business. The company sells a wide variety of replacement parts to the public, including parts for washers, dryers, dishwashers, hair dryers, curling irons, shavers, razors, power wheels, power tools, lawn equipment, and more. They have an international customer base.

The Challenge

The Mending Shed, an online store selling a wide variety of replacement parts, was struggling with its inventory management system. The company was constantly dealing with overages and shortages on inventory, leading to customer dissatisfaction when orders had to be put on back order. The lack of inventory tracking also resulted in misplaced items, leading to a significant amount of unrecoverable inventory. The company was spending more than six hours per day to create purchase orders for all of their vendors. The process of picking each order individually was time-consuming and inefficient, taking two hours per every 100 orders picked. Employees had to memorize where each item was stored in the warehouse, leading to long training periods before they became proficient in picking and processing orders.

The Solution

The company decided to implement Fishbowl Warehouse, a popular inventory management software for QuickBooks users. The software provided the features the company needed to manage its increasingly complex inventory needs. With Fishbowl, the company was able to continue using QuickBooks for their accounting needs while adding many new inventory control features. Fishbowl’s auto reorder points and auto purchase orders by vendor helped the company reduce the time it takes to create purchase orders from six hours to about one hour per day. The warehouse location, inventory management, and location sort order features enabled them to reduce the amount of time they spent picking orders from two hours to about 15 minutes per 100 orders. The company also integrated Fishbowl with their website to update the website in real time, allowing customers to see which products are in stock before placing an order.

Operational Impact

Fishbowl has improved every aspect of the company's operation.
The company was able to run leaner by making strategic cuts in inventory levels.
The company was able to vastly improve its customer service.
The company was able to do a complete redesign of the website from the money that Fishbowl has saved them.
The company was able to re-task employees to work on backburner projects, which has enabled them to improve and grow in areas they were unable to in the past.

Quantitative Benefit

Reduced the time it takes to create purchase orders from six hours to about one hour per day.
Reduced the amount of time they spent picking orders from two hours to about 15 minutes per 100 orders.
New employees are fully trained on warehouse operations in less than a week, rather than in two to three months.
Significantly fewer products are misplaced, thanks to inventory tracking tools.