Ariat Wholesale Footwear & Apparel Order Fulfillment Center

Project Overview

Ariat, a major wholesale brand in footwear and apparel, sought to transform its order fulfillment operations to handle high-volume, complex wholesale orders efficiently. The challenge was to process a vast number of items per hour—ranging from small accessories to large boot boxes—while accurately consolidating mixed orders that could contain both apparel and footwear for the same customer.

The project aimed to achieve cutting-edge efficiency by automating the entire post-pick process. The goal was to significantly increase throughput, enhance operational flexibility to handle diverse product mixes, and reduce reliance on manual labor, thereby lowering costs and improving accuracy in a fast-paced wholesale environment.

Technical Solution

EuroSort Twin Push Tray Sorter

The centerpiece of the solution is the EuroSort Twin Push Tray Sorter. This high-speed automated sortation system receives items from multiple picking lines and sorts them to designated chutes corresponding to specific customer orders. A key feature is its ability to discharge items to either the top or bottom destination within each chute, optimizing space and order grouping.

Key Features

The integrated system achieves an exceptionally high throughput, capable of processing up to 16,000 items per hour, accommodating the entire size range of Ariat's product catalog.

A major advantage is the system's ability to seamlessly consolidate orders that contain a mix of footwear and apparel items, which is common in wholesale B2B orders, onto a single sorter and into a single shipping carton.

The solution combines best-of-breed technologies: Exotec for apparel goods-to-person picking, Geek+ for footwear automation, and EuroSort for high-speed sortation, creating a tailored, multi-technology fulfillment pipeline.

Results & Benefits

The implementation led to a significant increase in overall throughput, with the system handling up to 16,000 items per hour, enabling Ariat to process more orders faster.

The automation reduced the manual labor required for sorting and order consolidation, directly translating to lower operational labor costs.

The system provided Ariat with greater flexibility to handle variable order profiles and product mixes efficiently, making the fulfillment operation more responsive to customer demand.

Challenges & Solutions

The core challenge was designing a system to efficiently consolidate a high volume of diverse items (small accessories to large boxes) from separate picking lines into accurate, mixed product orders for wholesale customers. Ariat and EuroSort solved this by implementing the Twin Push Tray Sorter as the central consolidation hub. This sorter was fed by two specialized, automated picking systems (Exotec for apparel, Geek+ for footwear), creating a unified, high-speed workflow that could handle the complexity and volume of mixed SKU orders.

System Integrator

EuroSort was the lead system integrator for the sortation and order consolidation segment of this project. They provided the core Twin Push Tray Sorter technology and oversaw its integration with the inbound conveyor lines from the Exotec and Geek+ automated picking systems. EuroSort's solution enabled the high-speed, accurate merging and sorting of items from both product streams, which was critical to achieving the project's goals of increased flexibility, throughput, and reduced labor.