Cue uses receipts as shipping labels in store-to-door strategy

Heather McIlvaine

4th Jul 2018

Cue has found a simple solution to make its store-to-door fulfilment option more efficient: use receipts as shipping labels.

The fashion retailer partnered with logistics company Shippit to utilise existing POS printers for shipping labels and expects to save $600 per store in printers plus ongoing maintenance and label costs in the process.

The move also enables store staff to meet the tight 20-minute window they have to confirm and pack orders for 3-hour store-to-door delivery or 30-minute click-and-collect.

“We were really excited that we could get couriers to accept shipping labels printed on POS printers. It’s a real game changer for us as a business to get that over the line with Shippit,” said Shane Lenton, Cue’s chief information officer.

“As a retailer, our counters aren’t set up to have another printer, and I don’t have enough USB ports. The cost of label printers is also really high, and then there’s added maintenance and label costs,” he added.

Cue over the past five years has been investing in a unified commerce platform that supports a raft of seamless shopping experiences, including click-and-collect, endless aisle and store-to-door.

With 87 per cent of click-and-collect orders being fulfilled in-store, and the balance being sent from warehouse to store, Lenton said the label issue was one of the major hurdles Cue had to overcome.

With over 90 stores across Australia, 240,000 orders placed per year and a 3c charge for each label, he expects the move to save tens of thousands of dollars in shipping costs per year.

He added that technology is nothing without team buy-in, and it is critical that the logistics process is as easy for staff as possible.

With customer satisfaction a driving force behind Cue’s unified commerce approach, Lenton said store discipline is key to the success of the endless aisle approach.

“We estimate a 20 per cent growth in online, and it also gives us the capability to push 100 per cent of our traditional online orders into stores as opposed to fulfilling out of our warehouse,” he said.

Cue is on track to increase annual sales by over 5 per cent with its store-to-door solution, extending its bricks-and-mortar offerings into a seamless experience for in-store customers.