KoneX Community Talks™ — Echte zorgen, Echte verhalen
In this KoneX Community Talk, we share the story of an established fashion store chain with its own warehousing and fulfilment operation that sold a part of its labels. Resulting in a sudden overcapacity in warehousing and spinning off their fulfilment operation in a independent profit centre.
About this KoneX Community Talks™ series: Anonymized conversations with e-commerce professionals about the pressures, doubts and operational concerns that often go unspoken. By sharing these stories, we aim to build a strong and connected community where everyone can learn from each other.
Transforming a warehouse built for a few large brands into a broader fulfilment operation
I spoke with the Sales Manager of the fashion retail chain’s fulfilment operation, a business unit spun off after the sale of part of its labels. His role was not to optimise growth, but to respond to an unexpected shift in reality.
A warehouse designed for scale was suddenly operating far below capacity, and the pressure to turn that space into a viable business grew quickly. In order to fill excess space, the Sales Manager needed to be able to grab any customer of any size, quickly. For a fulfilment operation designed for scale and internal distribution this is no easy case. This is his story.
Who he is
– Role: Sales Manager at a European fulfilment provider
– Category: Fashion fulfilment
– Market: European online retailers
– Business model: Fulfilment services for multiple fashion brands
– Seasonal influence: Strong peaks around fashion launches and sales campaigns
– Original setup: Warehouse optimized for a limited number of major fashion brands
– Current setup: Large warehouse with significant unused capacity after customer acquisitions
– Systems landscape: enterprise ERP, warehouse management systems and multiple webshops
– Key shift: From a few large customers to multiple smaller online retailers
Our conversation
What happened when two of your most important clients were acquired?
“We had been running a warehouse that was very deliberately designed for three large fashion brands. Everything was optimised around their volumes and their processes. When two of those brands were acquired by another group, we suddenly found ourselves with around sixty percent unused warehouse space.
Operationally, we were still functioning well. But commercially it was a shock. The cost structure no longer matched the new reality.”
How did that change your role as Sales Manager?
“My focus changed almost overnight. Instead of optimising existing relationships, I had to find new customers quickly. Not in a theoretical way, but very practically. Empty space costs money every day. Empty space costs money every day.
We needed to convert that capacity into revenue, and fulfilment for smaller online retailers seemed like the most realistic option.”
What made onboarding smaller retailers difficult?
“Our systems were never designed for that type of customer. The ERP environment worked perfectly for large volumes and stable clients, but connecting smaller webshops required a lot of IT involvement.
Each new integration meant discussions, configuration work and costs that were hard to justify compared to the expected volume of those customers. And with only two people in IT, we could not keep doing that indefinitely.”
How did you deal with that initially?
“We chose a pragmatic workaround. For each new customer, we implemented separate pick and pack software. That allowed us to move quickly and start operations without touching our core systems too much.
In practice, that meant we were running multiple small fulfilment setups inside one warehouse. It worked in the short term, but it also created fragmentation.”
When did that start to become a concern?
“After a while, the inefficiencies became obvious. Manual steps increased, licensing costs went up, and our core ERP and warehouse systems were no longer being used as intended.
What worried me most was scalability. Every new customer added complexity. I started to wonder how this would look if we added ten or twenty more clients.”
What was the underlying question you were trying to solve?
“We weren’t looking to replace our ERP. It did exactly what it was designed to do.
The real question was how to connect different webshops to one fulfilment operation without turning every onboarding into an IT project. We needed a way to standardise the connection while keeping our internal processes stable.”
What changed when that was resolved?
“The biggest change was that onboarding stopped being difficult. We could consolidate fulfilment back into our existing infrastructure and phase out the separate pick and pack tools.
From a sales perspective, that was crucial. I could talk to new customers without immediately involving IT. The process became predictable again.”
The concerns
– Unused warehouse capacity without clear commercial model
– High integration costs for smaller customers
– Temporary workarounds that become structural
– Growth dependent on IT availability
What we notice accross the sector
What we are increasingly seeing is that fulfilment providers are not limited by space or ambition.
They are limited by how complex their systems become when customer profiles change. Temporary solutions are understandable under pressure, but they tend to introduce structural friction over time.
Growth does not fail because of lack of demand, but because onboarding becomes too diffioult
Our advice on how KoneX could help
In similar situations, KoneX is used as an integration layer between web shops and fulfilment operations.
This can help by:
- Standardizing webshop connections without replacing existing ERP systems
- Reduce IT dependency during onboarding
- Keep fulfilment operations stable while customer diversity increases
The goal is not to add another system, but to simplify how existing systems work together.
Why this story matters
This story shows that fulfilment challenges are not always about growth pressures.
Sometimes it is about how quickly circumstances change, and how well systems are prepared for that without creating new risks.
Share your story
KoneX Community Talks™ is based on real-world experiences. If you recognize these concerns, you are not alone.
If you would like to share your story, anonymously or openly, you are always welcome to join the conversation.
Is this a familiar situation?
