New Vine Logistics, a wine shipping company, has found that Provia Software’s ViaWare Warehouse Management System (WMS) is serving as an essential component in the exponential growth of New Vine Logistics’ business. With ViaWare WMS serving as the cornerstone of the company’s supply chain operations, New Vine Logistics’ wine fulfillment business grew 400% in the past year, and the company’s non-wine fulfillment operations are projected to increase by 50% in 2004.
Using Provia’s ViaWare WMS as its distribution infrastructure, New Vine Logistics offers fully compliant consumer-direct shipping from wineries to customers in 42 states. This task could be a nightmare as each state has its own unique regulations for the transportation of alcohol, but since implementing the WMS in May 2001, New Vine has been able to achieve well over 99% accuracy in handling all data and inventory requests in its 90,000 square-foot warehouse.
In addition to providing both web-based and retail fulfillment logistics for 92 different wineries, New Vine Logistics uses the WMS as the backbone of its distribution activities for Illuminations, a retailer of candles and home decorating solutions.
The operational precision achieved with the WMS also enabled New Vine Logistics to explore new avenues for growth by offering food and wine gift baskets.
New Vine Logistics is leveraging the picking module within the WMS, in combination with its conveyor system, to allow workers to combine various wine and food products together into gift baskets and distribute them with virtually no inventory variance or mis-picks. New Vine Logistics has quickly built up a diverse catalog of gift products and expects to increase its gift basket catalog from 3,500 to over 4,000 product offerings this year.
"In this $45 billion industry of California wineries with more than 7,000 growers and vineyards, precision and accuracy in distribution are absolutely critical,” said Katie Schumacher, president and CEO of New Vine Logistics. “The configurability of the WMS solution enables our customers to receive their orders correctly and in a timely manner, while allowing us to achieve legal compliancy in both reciprocal and non-reciprocal states regarding the interstate shipment of alcohol. The ease with which we’ve been able to leverage the WMS has definitely contributed to a lower total cost of ownership, and enabled our organization to focus on the expansion and development of our operations.”