Struts
Client Overview
Struts Party Superstore are – alongside their well-known retail store in Carlisle – a high-volume online retailer fulfilling thousands and thousands of orders each month across multiple marketplaces and sales channels. Their operation includes a huge range of products and delivery options, requiring effective coordination between picking, packing and dispatch.
As the business thrived and order volumes continued to grow, the pressure on internal processes naturally increased, highlighting the need for new systems and processes that could support both speed and accuracy without adding complexity.
Objectives & Opportunities
When we began working with Struts Party Superstore, their dispatch workflow relied heavily on manual input. Each consignment had to be individually registered through any one of various courier portals – a repetitive process taking several minutes per order. This created an obvious bottleneck within the fulfilment process, increasing the time taken per-order and increasing the risk of human error.
The opportunity was to remove this friction entirely – streamlining dispatch, reducing manual effort, and enabling the team to handle greater order volumes without increasing headcount.
Discovery & Insights
To fully understand the challenges, we spent time on-site observing the complete fulfilment journey from order picking through to packing and dispatch. This hands-on approach allowed us to identify inefficiencies, workarounds and pressure points that weren’t immediately obvious from a technical perspective alone.
We saw first-hand how repetitive tasks were slowing down experienced staff and how system fragmentation required constant context switching. These insights shaped a solution focused not just on automation, but on usability and seamless integration into existing workflows.
Solution Strategy & Delivery
Working closely with the client, we facilitated API access to all major courier partners – including Royal Mail, DPD, UPS, FedEx and DHL – as well as Amazon for Seller Fulfilled Prime orders. We then designed and developed a fully bespoke fulfilment system tailored to their operation.
At its core, the solution enables staff to simply scan a barcode on an order document; the system then registers the shipment with the correct courier, generates tracking data, triggers dispatch notifications and prints a thermal label ready for application – eliminating multiple manual steps in one seamless action.
Results & Impact
The impact was immediate and substantial. What previously took 2-3 minutes per consignment is now completed in a matter of seconds, dramatically increasing dispatch speed and reducing operational burden. Beyond time savings, the system has also improved accuracy and consistency across the fulfilment process.
As the business has grown, the platform has continued to evolve – introducing intelligent packaging suggestions, automated retail packaging printing and additional workflow enhancements. The result is a scalable, future-proof solution that transforms a once labour-intensive process into a streamlined, efficient operation.