A case study with IPSY, FastFetch Corporation and Saddle Creek Logistics Services, about crafting a flexible and scalable fulfillment strategy for a major personalized beauty products subscription company. A finalist in this year’s Supply Chain Innovation Award, presented by SupplyChainBrain and the Council of Supply Chain Management Professionals.

IPSY is the largest subscription service for beauty products in the U.S. Over 12 years, it has grown from 10,000 to millions of monthly subscribers.

The company’s focus is on personalization of product, including its makeup kits known as Glam Bags. Its challenge was to scale operations to handle surging volumes while maintaining a five-day fulfillment window for some 2.5 million orders.

IPSY turned to Saddle Creek Logistics Services to create a strategy for managing order flow to customers throughout the U.S., Canada and Mexico. It needed to ensure both high throughput and high accuracy, with a fulfillment sequence that enabled rapid loading into freight containers for shipment to parcel carrier hubs around the country.

Saddle Creek partnered with FastFetch Corporation, an order-fulfillment technology provider, to design a fast and efficient architecture that included multiple assembly lines and the ability to accommodate customer choices for their Glam Bags from an assortment of more than 185 SKUs.

FastFetch had to design a system that was both efficient and fault-tolerant. Drawing on traditional pick-to-light technology, it created a system of small-footprint pick cells that could be expanded in number as demand grew. It was crucial to ensure that the failure of any one cell would not bring a halt to the entire operation. A pick-to-light system runs parallel to the cells to provide additional continuity.

The system, now operating in two facilities, achieved the desired speed, accuracy and scalability, while enabling personalization and boosting customer satisfaction scores. The return on investment was less than 12 months, IPSY says.