Mintsoft and Valentte
This warehouse management system case study shows how Mintsoft and Unleashed transformed and now underpin the manufacturing and ecommerce fulfilment operations for luxury home fragrance and skincare brand – Valentte.
Who are Valentte?
Valentte was started in 2011 by Co-Owners, Luke and Justina, selling handmade soap at Greenwich Market. As demand grew, they expanded to Covent Garden and then moved their operations to Cheshire, where they now handle all of their manufacturing and ecommerce fulfilment.
Their product range has grown from handmade soap to include home fragrance products such as reed diffusers, candles and mists as well as skincare. The key to Valentte’s success is keeping their manufacturing and fulfilment operations in-house, where they keep a close eye on the entire process, from sourcing ingredients, to shipping to their customers.
The Challenge
Valentte was experiencing rapid sales growth, at a rate of 100% per year, however as their business scaled up, operational challenges became a barrier to success. These challenges included:
- Running out of ingredients
- Losing sales
- Being unable to fulfill orders
- Unclear view of costs of production
- Lack of control over operations
- Order fulfilment accuracy
The team identified they couldn’t continue running their business from spreadsheets and un-connected systems. They began their search for software that would help them to take back control of their production and ecommerce fulfilment, and that’s when Unleashed and Mintsoft entered.
CEO Luke Bream said: “Before we adopted Mintsoft and Unleashed, it was pretty chaotic. We were growing very rapidly and really losing control of our stock holding and of our manufacturing process.
We were still running the business using Excel spreadsheets and that was a nightmare at scale. We were running out of ingredients, having too much of other ingredients and we just lost control. It was a very similar story inside our picking and packing operation - we needed more control. We needed a better understanding of booking couriers and general automation and picking and packing accuracy.”
"Before we adopted Mintsoft and Unleashed, it was pretty chaotic. We were growing very rapidly and really losing control of our stock holding and of our manufacturing process."
How Mintsoft and Unleashed has helped
It was critical that both sides of Valentte’s operations were taken to the next level at the same time, to ensure they could keep up with the sales growth. Both Mintsoft and Unleashed were implemented into their business simultaneously, and their onboarding was supported by the experts for each software at The Access Group.
Scalability
When Valentte adopted both Unleashed and Mintsoft, they were still a small team, and admitted only used the solutions at basic level to begin transforming their operations from being controlled via spreadsheets.
They started by using Unleashed to have better stock control, utilising Bill of Materials (BOM) and for assembly, and have progressed to using the system to forecast, demand plan, monitor production costs and more.
Similarly with Mintsoft, they began using the software in a relatively simple manner, without SKU locations or barcode scanning and have now added more automation and complexity to give them greater control in their fulfilment operations.
Luke Bream said: “Both software products [Mintsoft and Unleashed] work really well for us as a small 5 person business and equally work well for us with having 200 people inside the business and beyond.”
He continued: “The software has allowed us to operate at both those two different scales and was priced at a level that allowed us to scale in that way.”
Batch Picking
Before implementing Mintsoft into their fulfilment warehouse, Valentte were relying on very basic paper-based picking system – printing and picking orders on an individual basis.
Now, with Mintsoft fully embedded, Valentte are able to pick in batches of 16 orders with the assistance of the Mobile App.
Valentte’s high number of SKUs could have proposed a further challenge, however with Mintsoft, they’ve been able to map every SKUs location in the warehouse and give them a sequence. Meaning as their pickers are moving around the warehouse, they’re guided by the app in the most efficient route based on SKU locations needed for their orders, without having to double back on themselves or revisit the same aisle multiple times.
Head of E-commerce, Zac Zarb said: “We’re now able to pick a large number of orders in a short period of time.”
Luke Bream added: “The app that Mintsoft has works really well for our teams. We are picking and shipping orders seven days a week, 10 hours a day.”
Customer Satisfaction
Valentte have not only seen direct operational benefits from their adoption of Mintsoft and Unleashed, they’re also seeing customer satisfaction increase as their operational efficiency improves the consumers’ experience of buying from the brand.
Luke Bream said “We've seen big customer satisfaction improvements from implementing Mintsoft and they're not necessarily the obvious ones. The obvious one is improved picking accuracy and that is true, but the real customer satisfaction has come from getting orders out quickly and in the time. What Mintsoft really provides us with, is a solid platform for shipping an unlimited number of orders, and that's what it does - it's bulletproof.”
Additionally, Mintsoft provides a platform for Valentte’s Customer Service team to be able to answer and support customers after they’ve placed an order. Stacey Beardmore, Customer Service said: “We use Mintsoft every day. If a customer either emails or calls with a query, we can go over to Mintsoft, pop in their order number and see the status of the order. We can amend customer's orders as well, whether that’s products on the order, or the delivery information and customer details.”
“We’re now able to pick a large number of orders in a short period of time.”
What’s next for Valentte
The rapid growth of Valentte is showing no signs of stopping, and their goal over the next 2 years is to get to £100 million in sales. They see their software stack as being an important part of that continued growth.
“We are 50 times bigger in sales than we were in 2019. That growth exactly coincided with our use of Mintsoft and Unleashed. We couldn't have done it without those two pieces of software. They are completely integral to the way that we run and operate the business.”
Luke Bream – CEO & Co-Owner, Valentte
Valentte benefit from using multiple products from The Access Group. Read more about how Unleashed helps them take full control of their production and assembly operations in the customer story here.