Hobbycraft is bucking the trend in UK retail, with a fast-expanding network of stores across the UK, as well as a thriving on-line business.
The retailer specialises in supplies for arts and crafts as well as creative activities for children. The Hobbycraft Club has over 4 million members and customer engagement and interaction through marketing and promotions is high.
The Hobbycraft team source goods from Asia, the US and Europe and the business’ central challenge is to ensure that stock arrives in a timely manner to satisfy customer demand and promotions.
Hobbycraft chose to award the contract for supply chain services to Ligentia in late 2018. They saw us as a partner who was perfectly positioned to deliver agile solutions to ensure operational stability for the fast-moving business, whilst also delivering strategic initiatives to improve product availability, enhance customer experience and reduce cost.
When evaluating the other organisations that had submitted tenders to work with Hobbycraft, Ligentia stood out. Where some larger companies boasted larger size, they weren’t able to demonstrate the same responsiveness, passion for innovation or personal service ethos as was demonstrated by the team at Ligentia – making us the natural choice.
Ligentix software was also a major factor in the decision to work with Ligentia, providing greater visibility across Hobbycraft’s entire supply chain to drive day-to-day decision-making and pro-active planning.
As part of a suite of strategic initiatives, Ligentia is also working directly with Hobbycraft’s vendors at origin, looking at ways to optimise container utilisation so the business isn’t shipping fresh air. These smarter, more carbon-efficient solutions also serve to realise cost efficiencies.
We experience genuine benefits from Ligentia’s partnership approach. We have created a relationship of a two-way challenge, so we’re working harder and smarter to arrive at the best possible outcome at every stage in our process. It means that together we’re realising significant improvements in supply chain performance. We’ve also been able to automate substantial portions of the end-to-end process that were operated manually with our previous provider. The net result is that we are saving time and money, whilst driving up accuracy and delivering better performance data back to the business. I’m really excited about our future as we achieve market leading supply chain development.
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