Overview
Derby Supply Chain Solutions is a regional 3PL with over 2 million sq. ft. of operations and warehousing space. Combined with their subsidiary and sister companies, they have over 23 locations across 10 states. Derby offers a broad range of services that span organic long-term relationships with customers like GE and Whirlpool, to newer customers with highly diverse needs, including Dan-O’s Seasoning.
Managing widely diverse client needs was cumbersome in their old system. While the system did well with more traditional clients and offered plenty of features, those options were hard to configure. It took weeks just to do a base new-customer setup, which is a problem when most of today’s clients play heavily in ecommerce and retail.
Our new customers were doing a lot of retail fulfillment, parcel shipping, ecommerce, pallet in and pallet out… Parcel shipping was the last straw. Our former WMS did not do well in the ecommerce space. Packouts were painfully clunky, resulting in untimely order processing. We didn’t want to upgrade a system we were already unhappy with. That led us to a new 3PL solution.
Solution
Derby evaluated a handful of on-premise solutions before selecting Deposco’s hosted WMS software. They wanted to offload hardware costs into a SaaS WMS model that didn’t come with major maintenance or upgrades every 6 months and costly, time-consuming training. A clear roadmap of scheduled enhancements is a lot easier to maintain. Derby also liked Deposco’s superior user interface, flexibility, service, and fast, easy setup.
Derby is using Deposco for LTL, LPN, and parcel picking. With their former provider, they had to pick one order at a time whether parcel or freight, inflating labor costs and creating bottlenecks that extended processing times. Another game changer that eliminated much paperwork on the parcel side was Deposco’s batch picking, which allows them to pick 100+ orders at a time, sort and pack, and send them out the door.
Every client is unique in their setup
Derby’s real test of Deposco’s flexibility was with Dan-O’s Seasoning—a CPG brand with ecommerce capabilities that closely fit the Deposco model. Dan-O’s transitioned all their seller-fulfilled ecommerce business over a weekend from their former 3PL to Derby utilizing Deposco, without missing a single order.
Recognizing that complexity was no excuse for making a customer wait weeks for go-live, Derby worked with Deposco to transfer implementation expertise and templatize a setup model for each type of client. Using this method, Derby can now complete a new standard setup in as little as 2 hours.
Order processing and billing improvements
The same number of orders that used to take 2–3 days to process can now be processed in Deposco in about 7 hours with a team of only 3–4 people. In addition, Deposco’s automated, flexible 3PL billing enables Derby to generate, review, and send out invoices within the same day, on time, rather than taking a full week.
Time-saving integrations and customer portal
Deposco’s pre-developed 3PL integrations for order management with pre-built ‘Sockets’ such as Amazon and Shopify make setup much easier. In their prior WMS, this took months. Derby created an in-house application that leverages Deposco’s API to get client data into a standardized format. The ability to clone integrations and make small tweaks for each customer cuts down integration time dramatically, even for EDI integrations.
Derby clients can also see all their information in a customer portal that shows the complete breakdown of orders and inventory, not just quantities. This is a Deposco feature that Dan-O’s uses heavily—often reviewing the inventory, stock, and tracking information multiple times a day.
Dan-O’s Senior Director of Operations Phil Weeda, formerly a Regional Process Engineer for Amazon, is very familiar with other WMS implementations. He said the transition to utilizing Deposco with Derby was one of the best startups he had ever been a part of. Transitioning this line of business in-house supports Dan-O’s strategy to expand into new sales channels, enabling them to thrive during peak seasons and new product launches.
Success with Dan-O’s and other customers led Derby to roll out Deposco to multiple facilities under their holdings company, including Versant and Network Imaging Solutions (NIS), which didn’t have a WMS or utilized a different system. Ryan says this strategic move to better manage clients with diverse needs has simplified and accelerated growth across the organization.
Spotlight on Dan-O’s Seasoning
Derby partnered in 2024 with Dan-O’s, a purveyor of seasoning products sold nationwide in over 18,000 retailers and online. In 2023, the company was listed No. 37 on the Inc. 5000, having reported explosive 10,077% 3-year growth, and in 2024, Dan-O’s was named on the 2024 Insurgent Brand List.
With ecommerce, DTC, and wholesale retail as their biggest opportunities, Dan-O’s dismissed their previous 3PL due to problems with inventory accuracy, systems integration, and Amazon costs.
A painless transition
Derby took full ownership of learning Deposco for its customers. The client said the launch was the easiest he had ever been through. Once they flipped the switch, Deposco was perfect and painless out of the gate. If an issue comes up, it’s usually a 2- or 3-minute phone call to a solution. Dan-O’s can add a channel or change something, and it shows up in Deposco’s WMS pain-free.
During the first few months of clean-up from Dan-O’s ERP, data extracts out of Deposco gave them a transparent, up-to-date picture of sales and inventory. “We are able to better see our inventory, perform cycle counting, and can receive mass quantities quickly through scan-in. This greatly helps in planning, and our Finance team is very happy with the increased accuracy of our inventory and ordering,” Phil said.
Favorite Features
What started as a partnership to provide ecommerce and kitting quickly turned into additional projects including retail fulfillment, which was not in Dan-O’s original scope with Derby. What Dan-O’s loved about Derby’s investment in Deposco:
- Full-layer visibility: Channel-by-channel insights create next-gen customer service. Dan-O’s loves Deposco features like Inventory Condition; Lot & Expiration & Best-By tracking with drilldown into the impacted order; and order tracking, order transmission, order summary, and replenishment. The system provides a level of visibility they’ve never had before, enabling better decision-making and leaner inventory management.
- Total control and adaptability: Custom inventory condition fields enable Derby to see different types of similar SKUs, combine inventory, add new capabilities, and itemize inventory for a particular channel. That could be a shipper display build or custom job type, itemizing out different conditions from a planning perspective, or having multiple case pack rollups.
- Flexibility: Derby simplifies the many rules of Dan-O’s trading partners, such as post-order import (POI), weights, and more. The flexibility of the 3PL fulfillment software allows Derby to set certain rules and conditions like custom shipping options and notify Dan-O’s when specific order parameters are met. Custom rules have eliminated consumer-facing barriers with retailers, uncovered more wholesale opportunities, and kept their pricing model in line.
- Confidence against chargebacks: The channel-specific rules have been game-changing in terms of LTL order flow, cost, and increasing inventory to an nth degree. In Deposco, each channel has its own compliance scorecard. Dan-O’s had a few channels where they were consistently fighting order transmission and updates. As soon as they migrated, all those headaches with trading partners went away. One of their most important metrics, OTIF (on-time in full %), indicates a significant reduction in vendor compliance chargebacks.
- In-system carrier tracking: Deposco’s direct links to USPS and other carriers allow Dan-O’s to quickly rectify shipping escalations without navigating multiple systems.
These capabilities and services simplify the many unforeseen requirements a growing brand will face day to day. With every new problem, Dan-O’s says it has numerous different ways to troubleshoot them. They can onboard new trading partners, launch new products, and know orders are flowing in and out in a timely manner.
Dan-O’s is using Deposco to simplify special requirements such as managing:
- Shipping discrepancies
- Inventory planning
- Retailer requirements
- Food safety
“We chose Derby for the systems, processes, and people. Their holistic view of our business-critical endpoints is accounted for in their buttoned-up systems. Derby’s approach and transparent capabilities provided bang for the buck. In the end, we can consolidate the roles of our other 3PLs into Derby,” Phil added.
“Derby’s partnership with Deposco provides a lot of runway—exactly what we needed as we get into more corrugated display fulfillment to retailers. Derby gets it; they know exactly what they’re doing. They’re one of the best in the business—detail-oriented, customer-centric, and they understand our business just as well as I do. The word ‘no’ doesn’t exist in their vocabulary—we can throw anything at Derby and they’ll figure it out with detailed process mapping and a complete understanding of the Deposco system,” Phil explained.
“After 3 weeks live with Deposco, I wondered what to do with my extra time from not having to deal with system issues, fulfillment issues, inventory issues. I’ve been able to focus on our OTIF with the right people, processes, and systems in place. By partnering with Derby, you’re making a better decision for your business. Want something done right? Take it to Derby,” Phil said.
Derby is a leading 3PL provider with 23 locations across the East Coast and Midwest. Their diverse experience and customer base span numerous industries, including major appliances, food and beverage, automotive components, and more. To learn more about Derby and connect with a member of their team, visit their website.
