Founded in 1992, Clipper Logistics is one of the UK’s leading independent logistics companies, with turnover of circa £700 million. At 54 UK and European sites, Clipper employs over 10,000 core people and operates circa 16 million square feet of logistics space.
Success Story
Clipper Logistics
Warehouse Management
Clipper logistics meets retailers’ demand for speed and accuracy
The company
The business challenge
In providing warehouse and fulfillment services to its retail clients, Clipper must deliver an extreme level of speed, efficiency, accuracy and responsiveness. As demand volatility increases and customer expectations grow, Clipper needs the most advanced technology available.
The solution
For over 20 years, Clipper Logistics has relied on Blue Yonder’s warehouse management capabilities to optimize the warehousing and management of 500 million products per year for leading retailers.
“During the peak of the UK’s COVID crisis, the British government and the Ministry of Defence asked Clipper to provide warehousing for critical personal protective equipment. Typically, people talk about a rapid deployment being six, eight, 12 weeks — but we were up and running with Blue Yonder warehouse management in mere days. On the fourth day, we were fully operational and receiving PPE inventory.”
–Chief Executive Officer
Delivering extreme speed, accuracy and profitability for big retailers
“Our retail customers are moving massive product volumes and receiving large numbers of returns. Our job is all about delivering speed and accuracy on a massive scale. When products are selling well, they need to be released from the warehouse rapidly to be sold at full margin. Blue Yonder enables us to release inventory on 24 hours’ notice so retailers can move fast and maximize their full-margin sales.”
Managing uncertainty via advanced technology
“As 2020 proved, nothing in retail is certain. Retail forecasts are always going to be wrong. And so we need to help our retailer customers manage that uncertainty by being agile, being flexible, being collaborative and thinking out of the box. Our partnership with Blue Yonder allows us to anticipate problems before they happen and be proactive, agile and innovative in dealing with them.”
Supporting the “click and collect” demands of e-commerce
“At Clipper, we pride ourselves on helping customers meet their most urgent challenges. Today that means profitably serving the e-commerce channel. The rapid growth of click and-collect offered the opportunity to create ‘Clicklink,’ the Clipper/JLP joint venture that supports click-and-collect services for circa 40 customers and is integrated with our Blue Yonder warehouse management system.”
Solution benefits
Blue Yonder’s warehouse management solution positions Clipper to thrive in serving the volatile retail market. It enables Clipper to maximize visibility, quickly adapt to disruptions, and optimize tasks to meet customers’ cost and service expectations. The depth of functionality provided by Blue Yonder warehouse management provides Clipper with the confidence that, with configuration alone, they can meet the demanding needs of all their warehousing clients. Intuitive and user-friendly, Blue Yonder warehouse management is a flexible solution that makes it easy for Clipper to onboard new warehousing customers in a matter of weeks.
“I have absolute confidence in the power and accuracy of our Blue Yonder warehouse management system. When we’re asked by a customer to rapidly deploy, I never have to concern myself with, ‘Will the solution work?’ And that’s really important because we are a high-profile business serving high-profile retailers. Our new activities often appear in the press and trade magazines. Customer success and retention are key to our growth.”
–Chief Executive Officer
