“Since the early 1990s, when we were known as The Cricket Centre, we’ve been backed by years of experience. It’s helped us become the market leader in direct cricket retailing.”

Of course, with growth comes the inevitable growing pains. And as the GCCC continued to expand, their operations and supply chains became more and more complex.

The challenge

With 25 full-time retail staff scattered across Australia, plus another 75 warehouse personnel, the GCCC decided to move away from the classic centralised distribution model, allowing each store to receive shipments from suppliers directly. This was great for customers – B2C sales were speedy and efficient, and stores could manage their own inventory – but it also came with some headaches. The first being stock transparency.

“With all our stores operating independently, keeping track of inventory across the network was a constant challenge. Order processing speeds were great, but packing accuracy was down, and things were beginning to fall through the cracks.”

With a complex, decentralised retail network, the GCCC needed a warehouse management system to streamline operations, improve stock accuracy, and support the ongoing growth of the business. The solution needed to accommodate individual stores, too, which were in the habit of managing their own stock balances and handling B2C sales fulfilment.

In other words, they were looking to make their decentralised network more…central. They needed a platform that would minimise manual processing, improve efficiencies, remove inaccuracies, improve visibility, and provide more timely customer outcomes. All at the same time.

“As a retail business, you quickly realise that you’re actually a logistics business – that happens to sell cricket bats,. Without the logistics and good supply chains in place, you can’t do your job effectively.”

The solution

In 2018, the GCCC decided to invest in Thomax’s .wms platform for all its operations in Australia, bringing their entire warehousing and retail network onto one easy-to-use system. This had the immediate effect of reducing the cost of stocktakes and stock management by up to 75%.

“We looked at a few different logistics solution providers, but in the end Thomax seemed the most reliable. They’re owned and run in Australia, which we really appreciate, and their tech stack offered more robust functionality than the competition.” 

As a best-in-class 3PL warehouse platform, .wms is cloud-based and highly configurable. And that flexibility made integration a breeze, even with the GCCC’s complex supply chains and busy shipment schedule. .wms also worked seamlessly with the business’s existing carriers and systems, like ERP and bookkeeping. That robust integration has been crucial in scaling the GCCC’s operations over the last seven years.

“.wms was pivotal in driving scale into the business facilitating our capabilities to interact with new systems; by both introducing and working with new partners and carriers to optimise both sales channels and distribution.”

The results

Along with a 75% reduction in stock management expenditure, Thomax’s .wms automated a lot of the traditional, demanding, systems-based processes that GCCC had been doing by hand: back-end order processing and fulfillment, labelling, shipping, and administration. All the busy work that tends to chew up man-hours.

Even better, with greater transparency and control over their SKUs, the GCCC was able to improve stock picking and packing accuracy, which minimised returns and boosted customer satisfaction. According to the latest customer surveys, the GCCC now has a significantly increased customer satisfaction rating too.

“Thomax’s warehouse management system has allowed the Greg Chappell Cricket Centre to grow the business and expand our footprint (both physically and virtually), whilst retaining cost effective control of stock, facilitating fulfilment from existing facilities, as well as improving efficiencies compared with activities pre-implementing. I would – and have – recommended .wms to anyone looking for a warehouse management system.”

Final thoughts

With a solid warehousing platform under their feet, GCCC can now eye geographic expansion, with additional integrations to supercharge their ecommerce experience. Scaling the business is no longer something to fear – it’s something to embrace.

“In the future, we intend to leverage .wms’s technical capabilities to facilitate the migrating and implementation of a new ERP (with interfacing), and building an additional sales channel by integrating Shopify.”