Cutter & Buck Seattle Apparel Fulfillment Center

Project Overview

Cutter & Buck, a long-established apparel company based in Seattle with businesses in corporate wear, licensed products, specialty retail, and fast-growing e-commerce, faced a critical operational bottleneck. Their manual fulfillment process, involving picking across 21 aisles on three floors, could not keep pace with demand, especially during peak holiday seasons. Employees walked 8-10 miles per day, and the system struggled to meet customer expectations for same-day or two-day shipping.

The company needed a breakthrough solution to boost productivity, condense order turnaround times, and create a more efficient and scalable fulfillment operation. Their search led them to the AutoStore automated storage and retrieval system.

Cutter & Buck formed a partnership with Kardex, an AutoStore implementer in the United States. Kardex conducted a detailed analysis of Cutter & Buck's product sales, order flow, and pick rates to design a customized AutoStore configuration that would deliver the necessary performance boost.

Technical Solution

AutoStore Cubic Storage System

The solution centers on an AutoStore cubic storage grid containing 34,000 storage bins serviced by 54 robots. This high-density system replaced a 21,000 square foot manual pick module with a 10,000 square foot automated footprint—a 50% reduction in space. The robots retrieve and deliver bins to 11 stationary picking ports.

Key Features

The system's core achievement is condensing the storage and picking operation into half the previous space while significantly increasing throughput. The integration of FulfillX software provides intelligent control and crucial flexibility, such as the ability to rush specific orders on demand.

The implementation was executed with zero operational downtime, allowing Cutter & Buck to transition smoothly from the old system to the new AutoStore system, which went live on August 5th. The solution is tailored to fit Cutter & Buck's custom apparel workflow, handling both decorated and undecorated items efficiently.

Results & Benefits

Order fulfillment speed was transformed, with orders now being picked, packed, and ready to ship in under 10 minutes—a process that takes "single minutes" within the AutoStore itself. This directly supports the company's ability to meet aggressive same-day and two-day shipping promises.

The 50% footprint reduction freed up valuable warehouse space. Most importantly, the automation provided the capacity and efficiency to handle peak holiday demand, contributing directly to the largest and most profitable fourth quarter in the company's history. The system also created a better work environment by eliminating the exhaustive daily walking previously required of picking staff.

Challenges & Solutions

The primary challenge was physical limitation and inefficiency. The old manual picking process was spatially expansive and slow, creating a bottleneck during growth periods. The AutoStore solution provided the necessary high-density storage and robotic speed to break this bottleneck.

Meeting tight customer shipping windows was another major hurdle. The automated goods-to-person workflow, controlled by optimized software, reduced the entire fulfillment cycle to a matter of minutes, making fast shipping promises achievable.

The lack of order-picking flexibility in the old batch system was addressed by the FulfillX software's "Expedite" function. This gave management the real-time control needed to handle urgent customer requests, a capability that was previously non-existent.

System Integrator

Kardex served as the system integrator and implementation partner for this project. Their team worked closely with Cutter & Buck to analyze their specific needs, design the optimal AutoStore configuration, and deploy the system along with the critical FulfillX software. The partnership and support were described as "incredible" and "phenomenal," with Kardex going "above and beyond" to ensure the solution delivered transformative business results.