E-commerce

How robots are helping fashion seller Boozt achieve fast order fulfillment

More than half of customers, or 63%, rank delivery option as the most important consideration when it comes to the e-commerce experience.

Actually, loyalty programs, benefits, and payment methods are less important to both new and returning e-commerce customers than the appropriate delivery alternatives and order monitoring capabilities. Customers anticipate prompt delivery, and if they can have the required goods more quickly, they will quickly switch to a different brand. 63% of customers have switched merchants as a result of slow delivery, 60% have decided not to make another purchase from a retailer, and 43% have abandoned a basket or stopped browsing there.

When it comes to order fulfillment and delivery, one Nordic fashion and lifestyle store is working hard to make sure that delivery meets today’s consumer expectations.

Robotic tapping for quick fulfillment
Boozt is a multi-brand online retailer that runs both Boozt.com and Booztlet.com, a Nordic fashion store. More than 3.5 million people use the Boozt.com website.

With over 900,000 products from 700 fashion and lifestyle brands, 250 home brands, and 260 beauty brands, the Swedish e-commerce firm ships to 14 European countries.

In order to use a robotic fleet in its warehouse operations, it teamed up with AutoStore, a technology firm that creates order fulfillment solutions, in 2017. AutoStore was established in 1996 and provides both software and hardware capabilities. Its technology may be integrated with other third-party solutions.

Tobias Sjölin, CTO of Boozt fulfillment and logistics, stated in an email interview that “having a reliable, accurate, and fast automated fulfillment system that can sort through our diverse inventory and select the right product for the right customer is essential for our operations.” “With AutoStore empowered by Element Logic, we have over 1,150 robots helping us process 190,000 items daily, and we’ve even been able to achieve a record-breaking 63-second order fulfillment.”

Additionally, Boozt introduced AutoStore’s newest robot, the R5 Pro Robot, into the warehouse operations since the store recognized it was necessary to embrace it because it was designed especially for extensive e-commerce operations.

“The top pain point we’re always trying to solve is how to fill orders as quickly and efficiently as possible to ensure our customers have a positive experience when they order through us,” Sjölin stated.

Boozt has been able to accomplish this by implementing the world’s quickest storage and retrieval system per square foot, thanks in large part to AutoStore.

“With enhanced battery life, the R5 Pro has accelerated our productivity across multi-shift operations, enabling us to get our products in the hands of customers faster while optimizing warehouse space and reducing overall infrastructure costs,” Sjölin stated.

The development of R5 Pro
According to Jon Schechter, vice president, North American Business Development, AutoStore, the R5 Pro robot was unveiled in the fall of 2023. The robot is the most recent version of the company’s sophisticated retrieval and storage robots, which are designed to satisfy the particular requirements of extensive e-commerce operations.

“With the rapid expansion of e-commerce, retailers are challenged with processing higher volumes of orders within shorter time frames and face unpredictable spikes in demand,” Schechter stated in a telephone interview. “We developed the R5 Pro Robot to address these challenges through heightened productivity, flexibility, accuracy, and efficiency, making our automated fulfillment solution ideal for large-scale e-commerce operations.”

The R5 Pro Robot has a number of significant improvements. One significant benefit is that, through optimum charging, it can reduce the number of robots needed on the same grid by up to 15%, resulting in an 18% improvement in throughput per robot. This results in even more efficient order fulfillment. Reducing the number of robots reduces overall ownership costs and optimizes space and cost for the warehouse operation.

“With the efficiency, accuracy, speed, and productivity of the R5 Pro Robot, we’re able to provide leading retailers like Puma, Dick’s, BestBuy, Gucci, and more with the world’s fastest automated fulfillment system per square foot in the world,” Schechter stated.