Delivering Excellence: Biebod Distillery’s Seamless Shipment Journey
With orders in from multiple markets and channels, Ben, the Operations Lead, and his team were having to adapt quickly. They had daily online D2C despatches, pallets waiting for freight forwarders, and trade orders with precise delivery windows. As ever the “final mile” was always the most complex.
Managing multi-market, multi-channel, multi-format orders was a logistical tightrope. Getting online orders out every day, coordinating with various freight forwarders, and ensuring trade orders were dropped off at 2:07 PM exactly (or risked being returned) created constant pressure. Packing inefficiencies were not just stressful; they were expensive, eroding the hard-won margins from previous steps. Returns also needed to be processed quickly and accurately to update stock levels. And for bulk liquid movements, navigating manual customs and excise procedures was a constant headache.
MasterDistiller x Odoo brought order to the chaos. Our Shipstation integration connected inventory and sales orders directly, streamlining dispatch and allowing for flexible warehouse routings with 40+ key global couriers integrated. The automated routings meant our 3PL provider could pick up core gin orders while our own team handled trade orders with important merchandise, and D2C priority orders could go via FBA for next-day delivery. This flexibility allowed us to optimise logistics for different product types, customer segments, pricing tiers and customer touch points.
The dreaded “Pallet Jenga” became a thing of the past. With pallet logistic data and pallet build configurations, David’s team could sell every inch out of a pallet, getting items out efficiently and upselling those void spaces, reducing shipping costs by an estimated 10-15% and driving additional revenues.
When returns inevitably happened, they could be checked back into the warehouse quickly, and the connected, integrated stock levels were updated in real-time for the sales team, ensuring they kept shifting the right units.
For bulk liquid movements, our EMCS integration ensured that moving casks to another warehouse or location was as painless as possible, significantly cutting administrative time for excise duty movements by 80%.
With tracked product weights and dimensions enhancing our already enviable data the completion of those monopoly forms for new markets became a breeze ! Reducing export paperwork by days.
Early Wins that Compound :: The compounding effect of connected inventory (from Part 4) and integrated sales data (Parts 5 & 6) was profound here. Knowing exactly what was in stock and where, combined with streamlined order processing, meant fulfillment became a smooth operation. The early wins in accurate unit costing and margin management (Part 4) were protected and enhanced by efficient logistics, ensuring that the profitability of each sale was maintained right through to delivery.
Our products are reaching every corner of the globe, and our operations are humming. But growth brings new questions: How do we expand our production, diversify our offerings, or even welcome new clients, all while ensuring our existing infrastructure is well-maintained? That’s the focus of our next chapter…
Ready to explore how MasterDistiller x Odoo can help your distillery navigate the future?