The Climbers Shop: Multi channel despatch solution

Established in 1959, The Climbers Shop was the first outdoor shop in Ambleside and is still thriving today. It has evolved into a true multi channel business with store sales, mail order and a growing online presence. It has become a focal point for many climbers, walkers and holidaymakers wanting to kit themselves out for the outdoor lifestyle.

The Challenge

Traditionally, the customers would phone through their orders. All the despatch details, including the invoice, address labels and Royal Mail manifest paperwork would be completed manually. Once all the orders were completed, the goods were taken to the local Post Office where time was taken processing the parcels. As technology evolved, The Climbers Shop moved on to using a Royal Mail OBA and the Parcelforce online system. Although this did speed up the process, there was no integration between these systems and The Climbers Shop EPOS system. Once the orders had been processed, they had to manually email each customer with a carrier tracking number and a link to the relevant site. The biggest challenge for The Climbers Shop was coping with the increasing volumes whilst using the existing system as it required knowledge of numerous systems to get the goods out of the door.

The Solution

The Climbers Shop is a customer of Citrus-Lime, who are retail specialists providing integrated epos and ecommerce systems. MetaPack are fully integrated with Citrus-Lime and offer a seamless solution to their customers. The introduction of MetaPack was the missing link. It linked together the web ordering and despatch system. Now customer details are entered just once and this information is carried through to the delivery process with MetaPack automatically allocating the correct carrier, printing labels and issuing an email with a tracking number on despatch. This has saved an enormous amount of time, and reduced the strain on resources.
There is no longer a need to provide training for numerous systems as MetaPack operates from one simple, easy to use interface, providing a scalable solution that will grow with the company. The Climbers Shop are also using the MetaPack Returns functionality and are taking advantage of the International capabilities too.

"We had set up our in-store managemen systems and required a despatch solution. We heard about MetaPack through Citrus-Lime. MetaPack have provided us with a system that is so easy to use and has saved us a huge amount of time. "

Joseph Cowell, Operations Manger