Old Cannery

Old Cannery Furniture Warehouse in Sumner, Wash., is known as the "little store that got way out of hand." There are more than 130 employees managing a store that is 10 acres of warehouse and showroom space.

The business was started in 1953 by a husband and wife team. The husband designed sofas and built the frames from lumber he harvested. He hand tied the springs, then he and his wife sewed the upholstery. The business was so successful, that the couple eventually began working with other manufacturers and moved into a turn-of-the-century brick building that had been a cannery factory. The building encompassed 500,000 square feet - the equivalent of 10 acres.

Cris Ness was hired as a consultant for the company, but he eventually became the retailer's information technology manager because, as he puts it, the business was operating on a "sneakernet" system.

"That's where you run paper where it needs to go," he says. "In other words, they were mostly manual. They had a Windows-based system for accounting, but that was it."

After making many phone calls to primarily industry-specific software companies, and after previewing several demos, Ness finally decided that STORIS was right for Old Cannery.

"STORIS had many years in this business, and the system was easy to use. We contacted several retailers using STORIS who told us good things about the system," says Ness.

Going high-tech was "a big culture shock to a lot of people" at Old Cannery, admits Ness, "and we had our challenges. But when most employees saw that it was really happening, they bought into it. They see how it's streamlined our processes and enabled us to make fewer errors in order processing and in load outs."

Ness says that because Old Cannery is about 50 percent in-stock and 50 percent special order, many customers actually take the furnishings home with them the day they purchase them.

"This is a system with controls," says Ness. "STORIS helps keep employees from making mistakes such as sending the wrong products home with the wrong customers. The whole process is so streamlined now. We've already seen our margins increase by one third."

Since Old Cannery is a fast-paced business, according to Ness, with average sales of $2.5 to $3 million monthly, he said it was imperative to find a system that worked well.

STORIS' Vision R8, which Old Cannery went live with for inventory in August of this year and for sales in September, is a fully integrated, real-time solution that connects all essential aspects of a retailer's operations - from POS and supply chain management to financial reporting and analytics.

"The support from STORIS has been awesome," adds Ness. "They're really attentive and really knowledgeable. We are very happy."