‘A Huge Win for Us’: Avenue Shops Boosts Storage Capacity 2.5x, Daily Throughput 65% With Hai Robotics

After navigating 7 warehouse moves in just 6 years, Avenue Shops, the Lindon, Utah-based apparel drop shipper, believed they had found their long-term home in a spacious 30,000-square-foot warehouse. But, as demand for the company’s “boutique-as-a-service” model showed remarkable growth, an expansion began to look imminent.

Faced with the stress of yet another relocation, co-founders Glen and Adam Womble decided to take a different approach — growing up instead of out. After evaluating several solutions, they chose Hai Robotics’ Automated Storage and Retrieval System (ASRS), driven by Autonomous Case-handling mobile Robots (ACRs), to maximize vertical space utilization and streamline fulfillment operations in a flexible and cost-effective manner.

The results were transformative. The HaiPick System drastically reduced Ave’s storage footprint by 60% — compressing it from 15,000 to 6,000 square feet — while simultaneously increasing storage capacity by 2.5 times. The introduction of 28-foot shelving facilitated a 4x increase in storage height, allowing Ave to accommodate over 12,000 SKUs within the smaller footprint.

The impact on order fulfillment was equally impressive, with a 65% jump in orders shipped per day.

“The Hai system has really given us a competitive edge,” says Adam, Ave’s co-founder and Chief of Staff. “One thing we've heard since going into the system is that we're actually shipping too fast!”

Manual labor requirements also saw a significant reduction, with the number of employees picking orders per shift decreasing from 5-10 to just 1-2. This has helped mitigate staffing shortages, boost workflow efficiencies, and improve employee well-being and job satisfaction.

“The team has loved the introduction of the robots. The ways in which it's changed their job has been very meaningful,” Glen says, adding that the HaiPick workstations are “incredibly simple to understand and easy to train.”

Now, the Womble brothers say they are better poised than ever to serve their customers, and are excited for future growth.

“The fact that we've been able to double the number of orders we've shipped each month and not slow down in our shipping — still ship same day or next business day — with the help of Hai has been a huge win for us,” Glen says.

Want to know more? Attend our educational session with Avenue Shops at Modex 2024: “ASRS, With No BS: A 3PL’s Experience with Automation.”